Faye Who?
by Li Young
Summary: Completed!! Sorry the eppie sucks ^_^;;, She lived a life that never really knew what love was until he stepped out of the shadows of death to embrace her. S X F
1. CHAPTER 1

**_Disclaimer:_** Cowboy Bebop isn't mine.   
  
**NOTE:** I know all that my stories are depressing. I am so sorry if you get depressed reading this but writing helps me feel better after a good cry or outburst of anger. I feel for Faye because Spike left, and geeze I think I am starting way too many Cowboy Bebop stories!!!!  
  
SECOND NOTE~ Alright I did this at a real late hour so there is proabaly tons of mistakes. I'll go over it tomarrow but enjoy it for now!  
~VT~   


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Set six months after Spike's *Death*_  
  
_Chapter One_  
  
She stopped crying a long time ago for what he should have had but didn't, what he could have been but wasn't. He was gone, and of course she dealt with death and violence everyday, and.....she hadn't even really liked him anyway. As soon as the thought registered in her mind she felt guilty. She felt ashamed that she couldn't admit even to herself that she really missed him deep inside.  
  
Faye Valentine had found the past she had always been looking for six months back, but when the past turned out to be nothing but bones without skin there really wasn't a reason to go back to it. So, as anyone would have done, she had looked to her future- Spike, Ed, Jet, Ein, and the Cowboy Bebop. Five elements that made living meaningful.  
  
Spike had been the heart of the group.   
  
But Spike had had other plans besides the future with the ones that loved him most, who needed him most. Who wanted nothing but the best for him. Who tried to make him see beyond his past that held him chained somehow. Who prayed for him to look at their eyes and not leave what he would never come back to.   
  
Obviously his friends had not been important enough. Obviously he hadn't cared all that much about how selfish he was being by taking away the only thing some of them ever wanted.   
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Friendship. Truth. Loyalty._  
  
Spike had died and ended his dream, ended the fantasy he thought was nothing without his dreamer, his Julia, with him. He'd gone and left Faye standing in the hall way shooting her gun with wrenched sobs, sobs that still tore at her in memory with tears that scarred her heart and would never fully heal through time.  
  
Even though he had been a pain in the ass, Faye had felt connected with him and Jet. With the Cowboy Bebop and the life she had there. She felt like she had had a home to go back to at night when her feet were weary and her soul tired. Then when he left things just were too painful, too memory filled to be around anymore.   
  
Faye kicked a can with her black boot and sent it screeching down one of the dark corners of the street of the planet Jupiter. She had since changed her attire to be more grim, to fit her mood. She wore black leather pants, a black leather coat and a gray stretch shirt. Her hair was pulled up in a pony tail with a black hair clip, and the purple ends were a bit bluer than usual. She was a whole lot bluer than usual.  
  
She dressed to be like Spike's Julia. And in truth she _wanted_ to be Julia. She wanted to be that cold, exotic goddess. That woman who had had the audacity to steal Faye's future, her only reality of a home. Spike had been the part that held her future; Jet, the Bebop, and herself, together. Without him, her future, her home, had no warmth, no fire to heat the hearth. Without that warmth a home was nothing but a hollow cave that held listless memories and aching thoughts everywhere like scattered leaves on the ground. Her home became as dead as the trees in fall without him.   
  
And now she was left homeless.  
  
_Funny,_ she thought at times, _that you never really know how much a person means to you until they walk out of your life. W_hen he had left her standing in the hallway of the Bebop she had stood by and done nothing, couldn't do anything, and for the first time she felt useless. It had all been almost too much to bear let alone think about.   
  
She wanted things back the way they were, even with Spike and Jet always chastising her about what she did, where she went, what she wore. At least by their snide remarks she knew they cared enough about her to at least talk to her.   
  
Now she had no one, and for some reason she felt incredibly sad and happy at the same time. No one was there to walk out on her while at the same time no one was there to love her, make her feel special, make her happy when she was sad.   
  
Faye wanted to stop feeling all together, she wanted to stop caring because caring meant pain. She didn't want anymore pain in her life. She just wanted to feel empty and cold, and lifeless. No sadness, no anger, no happiness, just a nothing that could heal her old wounds and bare barriers against any on coming ones. She wanted to be controlled so she didn't have to turn and see faces who counted on her too much, and she didn't want to have to make choices that would hurt another. She wanted someone else to make those choices for her, to move her like a doll so all she had to do was live the rest of her life as a puppet. She didn't care, at least she'd being doing something with her life instead of sitting around wishing it away like a vegetable.   
  
She wasn't going to die while doing nothing, she was going to die doing something like wasting her life. There wasn't anything else to do, she had nothing left.   
  
She turned a corner and opened one of the doors of the nearest bars. She needed a good drink, one that took her whole problems away like a tsunami. She needed to stop for a second, say good-bye to her humanity before she walked through the doors of the Red Dragon and sold her soul. She was planning on joining the Syndicate that was apparently still a crime and terrorist group, feared greatly by many. Ah, to be feared...  
  
She wondered who the new leader was now that Vicious was gone, that Spike was gone. She wondered what it was going to be like there. Was it going to be painful or chillingly thoughtless?   
  
For all it was worth, she didn't care more than thought. She looked around the dim lit bar and coughed at the sudden inhalation of the smoke that was in the room. People of all sorts sat around in tables, talking softly, and secretively. She walked to the bar and ordered her favorite drink, taking a seat on the nearest stool. Her whole body felt light as she sighed heavily. She looked up at the bulletin board scanning the latest bounties, looking for anything interesting to occupy her mind with. The bar tender came around and gave her her drink. "Looking at the bounties?" He asked as if he didn't already know.   
  
Faye turned her body away from him. "Maybe, maybe not. What's it to you?" she said as she sipped her drink. The bartender huffed.   
  
"One is right down there, at the end of the bar," he said pointing to a red head punk in a black and white hockey jersey. Faye glanced at the board and saw the name Hei Tsuki, 500 wong. He wasn't worth her trouble but she knew she could use the extra pocket change. Besides it looked like easy money and easy money was hard to come by these days.  
  
She drank the rest of her drink and smiled. A charming smile that made the bar tender sweat. Then she was off and making her way to the red head punk. She barely noticed the man in the trench coat and black cowboy hat also planning on paying Red Head a visit as well. She reached him first though, and she used her body to her advantage. "Hello," she said so shyly she was getting sick inside.   
  
Red Head looked up and smiled. "Hey, babe. Looking for some trouble?" His voice was sly, definite jerk material.   
  
Faye knitted her eyebrows. "Trouble? Oh no, I don't want any trouble." She put on her best innocent look, putting her forefinger to her lips that were pouting something terrible. She knew his type, he liked to hear his women scream and cry. She made sure her ass was sticking way out in his view and her cleavage was in his full range as she leaned down on the bar beside him. She made her body look very inviting. She rested her chin on her one hand.   
  
His smile widened. "Well, I ain't any trouble, babe." He put his arm around her waist and breathed in her face. _Mmmm...yuck_, she thought trying not to gag.   
  
"That's what I thought," she said childishly. "All these men look so, so, so angry," she said looking around before staring him in the eyes. She knew her aqua eyes were wide, naive.   
  
"Well, don't worry about it with me," he said as he leaned foreword to give her a kiss.   
  
"Oh, don't worry," she began innocently, before she kneed him in the groin. "I won't," her voice was rough and cold as she said that.   
  
Red Head fell to the floor in a heap of agony. The bar was suddenly silent except for the groans of the man before her, lying on the floor, clutching both hands between his legs.   
  
Then she felt a hand on her shoulder and she turned smiling sweetly. A man with biker style clothes on stared at her with anger. His fat face red with rage. "Hei never done nothing to you, bitch," he said angrily.   
  
Faye could feel her eyes heat with rage. She didn't like to be called a bitch. "Nah, he just pinched my ass too hard," she replied so coldly she could actually feel the change in the air. Two men stood behind the biker and came towards her. _Damn, _she thought. She stole a glance at the bar tender who was smiling arrogantly. Obviously he knew this was going to happen, and she made a mental note to kick his ass pretty hard before she left. Assuming she left alive.   
  
"I think you need to be taught a lesson." The biker moved towards her.   
  
The man in the trench coat moved next to her. "I think my mom taught me enough lessons when I was kid," she said angrily not noticing the man beside her. "She taught me never to talk to strangers, especially ugly ones with brains the size of peas," she said angrily. The biker didn't like that.   
  
"I think you're mom was a bitch just like you!" he charged her.   
  
Before she could think the man in the trench coat had knocked the biker down with one swift movement. The biker's friends stared at their new opponent angrily as they took out their knives and guns. The bar turned into a riot as tables turned over and people began running to the exits.   
  
Faye left Mr. Trench coat to deal with the Biker gang as she went after the bartender. Oh, he was going to get more than a piece of her mind. She jumped on the nearest table and looked around. Then she saw his sorry form emptying the cash register hurriedly. In one easy bound she was squatting on top of the bar, in front of his face, her aqua eyes angry as hell. "Hello," she hissed. She grabbed his collar and pulled him up to her as she stood, she was a strong bitch and she knew it. "Thought you could pull one on me?" she asked, her lips brushing his cheek. She could smell his fear. He was shaking, the same fear she breathed in was reflected in his eyes. She smiled and took out her gun she had concealed in her pocket. She licked his cheek, her ruthless behavior disturbing even her own heart. "I'm going to kill you now," she said softly. She was feeling reckless, and she was pissed. Not a good combination for her prey's sake.  
  
"No, no, please," he begged. He wept and the tears that fell down his face had no effect on her withered heart.   
  
She licked the end of her gun. "I bet if I had begged for you to help me while those boys were roughing me up you wouldn't have even lifted an eyelash." She smiled as she pressed the gun under his chin. She felt cold, compassionless. "Good-bye," she kissed him on the lips, stifling his cries as she pulled the trigger. She felt blood on her lips as the shot faded into the dying air. What had she done? She was sick at the thought of what she just did, so she brushed it away as if it didn't happen. _Forget. If you forget you didn't do it. At least not in your mind, and that's all that counts. _  
  
She threw the body to the ground as she jumped from up top the bar and turned to face whoever was left. The man in the trench coat had his back to her but the two who had drawn knives and guns stared at her in horror. She pointed her gun in their direction, and in a flash they were gone as was everyone else in the bar, including her bounty.   
  
"Damn," she muttered as she wiped the blood from her lips and face. Her shirt was splattered with it but she didn't care all that much. It wasn't there, it wasn't there. as long as she kept telling herself that she was fine. The man in the trench coat turned around, the hat covering his eyes. He wasn't scared of her, she could feel that certainty in the air. "What do you want?" she asked as she sat down on the stool and rested her arms on the bar. She knew she looked like some crazy creature from a horror movie but she could have cared less. She wished she could have cared less.  
  
The figure moved towards her, his lanky movements so familiar. Faye could feel her head begin to ache. She looked up sharply. _No, it couldn't be._..! "Who are you?!" She asked as she got up quickly. He was the same height as... as....  
  
She pulled the hat off his head and stared at the multi colored eyes. Fuzzy green hair, long nose, smoothed tanned skin. "Spike, you- you...!" Her voice was excited. Then she grew terribly angry and slapped him hard across the face. He held no smile and only looked pained when his gaze met hers once more. His eyes so innocent yet so knowing and mature. Just like she remembered. "You asshole!" she screamed.   
  
He smiled. "Glad to see you too, Faye." He brushed his long fingers through his wild hair. He rubbed his cheek gently and stared down at her blood stained shirt. "Don't even tell me what you did to that poor guy," he said softly. He looked around the bar and sighed. "I actually wanted to get a bounty too, and would have except for your dumbass."   
  
Faye was opened mouth. Spike was alive! he was there! She wanted to run up and hug him, kiss him, feel that he was real and she wasn't hallucinating. But then she gained full composure. _Remember what he did to you. What he put you through. How insignificant he made you feel when he chose death over you. _Faye shrugged. "Yeah, well first come first serve." She lit a cigarette. "And I'm not a dumbass, you're the shit head in this family," she said through the smoke.   
  
"I didn't know we had a family. I mean, Faye, c'mon, us in a family? It's a comedy show all in all," he said expecting her to smile. But she just turned away, she refused to feel for him again. He betrayed her once, and never again was that going to happen.   
  
"Yeah it's shit loads of laughter." She walked out of the bar into the cool air. The smell of blood was all over her and the nauseating reality of what she did, how she murdered, began to sink in her stomach. Spike followed her and sighed.   
  
"Faye, I-" he began.   
  
"Shut up, Spike. I don't know where your 'friends' are prioritized in your life now, but I remember quite clearly you chose a happy-go-lucky death over us then. I didn't want to believe it back then but pain bring people back to reality. I'm joining the Red Dragons, leaving you and Jet and the Bebop behind," she said coldly. Suddenly she felt how childish that choice really made her seem.  
  
Spike stared at her with amusement. "I'll guess we'll be seeing alot of each other then."   
  
She turned to him utterly cold, and he shivered inwardly. "What do you mean?"   
  
"I'm the leader of the Red Dragons, now." He looked at her softly.   
  
_Look at us. We've both changed so much in the last six months. _Faye felt so cold, and so alone. She sighed.   
  
"Well, in that case maybe I'll just keep pursuing my bounty hunter life." She puffed at the shrinking cigarette.  
  
"Yeah, looked like it was going great back there," Spike said sarcasticly while pointing back at the bar with his thumb.   
  
She was angry with him for mocking her life when his was just as lousy. "I got by for six months on my bounty hunting." She said as if trying to prove something. She scolded herself for acting like the old Faye, the one Spike could catch in the net of teasing remarks and reel her in like a fish. She started walking away to the hotel she was staying at. Shouldn't she have been happy things were like the old days?  
  
"Faye, wait up!" Spike called after her. She didn't stop but he quickly caught up to her. "Faye, I need to talk to you," he said as he reached her and paced his steps with her feet. "Jet's missing," he said as he grabbed her arm and stopped her.   
  
She stared up at him with aqua green eyes. "Jet's missing?" she sounded worried, but she really wasn't inside. She was a great actress when it came down to it. Jet was a big boy, he could take of himself.   
  
"You don't understand, Faye. He just vanished, and I have this feeling something bad happened to him." Spike was all serious now. His eyes were so intense, just like the day he left...  
  
"Ok, Spike. I'll just pack my things and go off with you after six long months and pretend you never seemed really dead in my mind and life. I'll just pretend that those six months didn't happen," she said sarcastically. "Get a life, fro man." She turned from him taking her arm with her. "Does Jet even know your_ alive?"   
  
_There was a pause. "Jet was the one who stood by my bed the whole time I lay in coma," he said softly.   
  
Faye stopped and turned. She felt guilt hit her for having not been there for him. She wanted to ask how he'd gotten out, what exactly happened, what was he thinking? But she pushed everything out of her mind. No feeling and no pain, was her main thought.   
  
"You've changed, Faye," Spike said disdainfully.   
  
"We both have."  
  
"You've changed the most."   
  
"I never intended to. Shit happens. You should know that better than anyone."   
  
"I'm sorry," he offered lightly.   
  
"That's not good enough."   
  
"What is?"   
  
She thought a moment. "I don't have anything to say to you anymore. I want to just live all by myself. Waste my life and die without pain and regrets. " Her voice was so monotone.   
  
"Faye,.."   
  
"I can't talk to you anymore tonight," she started and began to walk.   
  
"Just because you want to change doesn't mean you will."   
  
She paused a moment. What he said was true. She wanted to change more than she was changing, and every change she put herself through was making her sick.   
  
"Meet me here tomorrow around eight and get your ass ready to leave this planet. You and I are going to be looking for Jet." He regained that authoritative smart ass attitude he had always had. The attitude that angered her so much it made her hot inside, made her burn with a firery rage. When she turned around to retort a rude and snide remark he was gone.   
  
She turned around and cursed to herself.   
  
Spike was back, but where was Faye? The woman who walked alone now wasn't Faye Valentine, but a stranger unrecognized by the reflection in the mirror longing to be something differnent then who she was inside.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. CHAPTER 2

**_Disclaimer:   
_**CB is not mine, unfortunately.   
NOTE: I am writing again very late again. SO SUE ME!!!! Ok maybe not sue me, but oh well. Again I warn there are prolly tons of mistakes!!!  
Byes!  
~VT~  
  
Chapter Two  


  
She had no idea what she was doing at the corner she swore she'd never set foot on again after last night. She had no idea why her bags were packed and sitting on the curb in front of her. All she knew was she owed Jet for giving her everything he had given. He'd opened his ship to her, though reluctantly, he'd given his very bad cooking to her, he'd lent her the skills to repair her ship that always got blown up or damaged in some way, and he'd given her a chance to be someone besides the lost girl without her memory. Without Jet she wouldn't have been where she was now, she would never have had met Ed, or Ein, or Spike. Jet was the main reason the Cowboy Bebop and it's crew came together.   
  
She owed Jet everything and she owed Jet nothing. Easy come, easy go. He came into her life swiftly as if he were an angel. She never _asked_ him for her his hospitality in words, and she was rude to him the whole time she was around him, but he gave her everything that was his if only for a short while.   
  
In any case she felt she owed him alot, even if part of her told her she didn't owe him a damn thing.  
  
She smoked a cigarette, trying to deny she was actually at the street corner. She wasn't doing it because Spike had told her to, she was doing it on her own terms, on her own conscience. _Faye_ was doing it because _Faye_ wanted to,_ not_ because some stuck up asshole like Spike ordered her too.   
  
Her mind twisted and her feelings altered. She felt like a kaleidoscope of emotions that wouldn't just turn black and white.  
  
No, she wasn't going to do this. No, it just wasn't happening. Spike was a great detective when he wanted to be, he could do it all by himself. He had felt he could've die by himself, so why not let him find Jet by himself? Her heart was beating with wanting to help Jet and wanting to just leave it all to Spike, leave it to the dumb ass who had stranded her in between the past and future without a second thought. She was so confused, she wanted so much and couldn't have what she wanted both ways. She rarely didn't have what she wanted in her life and then in walked in Spike screwing up her priorities, feelings, and objectives just like he did six months ago.   
  
She picked up her bags to leave, angry that she had gotten suckered into even thinking about going on a hunt with him. She should have learned her lesson, but once again she had found herself going back to the same old man who was going to just leave her in the same old rain of pain, of loss, of insecurity of what she saw in the mirror. No, not this time. She wasn't going to give him even a thought of a chance to hurt her again.  
  
_Great call, Faye,_ she thought sarcastically to herself as she began walking away. _Walk head first into another surge of pain, of his bullshit that left you in sobs last time.   
  
_"Faye, where are you going?" His voice asked sternly.   
  
"Home," she said disdainfully. Why did she feel so guilty for leaving, for not wanting to go with him to find Jet? Jet was going to be all right, Spike always came through when it mattered most, when his friend's lives were at stake even if he did hurt them emotionally in the coldest and cruelest ways at times.   
  
"Where's home?" He asked his voice knowing.   
  
She didn't have one was his point. She drifted from planet to planet, hotel to hotel, job to job, searching for someplace to even hint to her as being 'home'. She hated him for acting as if he knew her, as if he understood she didn't have any place to call home.   
  
_You let yourself get warm again. Your supposed to be ice cold. Stop feeling! _A voice cried inside her head. Why feel guilty, why feel hurt, why feel frustrated, all those things did was get in the way of her right judgment. All feelings really offered was a damp weakness that hindered decisions, hesitated what was already there, hoped falsely what could never be.  
  
She felt her body stiffen her whole form go cold. "Home is wherever I go, and wherever I am," she said turning towards him. Her gaze was impassive, was nothing like the old Faye he once knew.   
  
"That's not home. That's places you go, places you wander to. Faye, your home is on the Cowboy Bebop and you know it," he said staring at her impassively. He wore faded jeans, a white shirt and a black trench coat. His green hair wavered in the night air as he lit a cigarette.   
  
Fury raced through her. The Cowboy Bebop was not her home! She'd been away from it for six months! How dare he act as if he knew her, as if he had been there every day since he had left her! He was really never going to know her, he was always going to keep assuming, wasn't he? Faye thought as she looked into those multi colored eyes. He was going to keep assuming this was how things were and this was how things will stay even if I am wrong about them. She hated him more than anything then for just _assuming_ he knew her when he didn't.   
  
"The Bebop _was_ my home," she said angrily. She stressed the 'was' with anger. "But I'll be _damned _if it's my home now." She wanted to turn from him but his eyes looked into her soul and told her that finding Jet was her duty, her obligation. Jet was part of a long forgotten memory, a long awaited destiny that brought five beings together and split them apart.   
  
Spike waited for her, knowing she was going to come with him.   
  
_He thinks he knows everything,_ she thought angrily. _He thinks he knows everything about the whole damn world, about Jet, about me, about everything. _She walked towards him, her aqua eyes a deadly blue flame of fire. _I'll show him that he does not know me, he cannot not order me around, and he does not know everything.   
  
_"I'll go, but don't expect me to be like I was. I _have _changed. And you were right, Spike. I _want_ to change. And I get everything I want, so stay out of my way." She clenched her teeth and set her jaw. She stared him straight in his surprised eyes and glared at him with every ounce of hatred she owned. Things were different now, she hated him, and she was cold.   
  
His eyes narrowed, his face became serious as he nodded. "Fine, whatever you say, Faye," he said turning from her and walking over to a red sports car. "Get in, we leave this planet in an hour."   
  
She walked over the car with determined steps. She wasn't going because _he _said so, she wasn't getting in the car because _he_ said so. She was doing what _she _wanted. She opened the door, threw her stuff in the back and sat in the front seat, slamming the door, hard with her surging feelings. Spike came in a few minutes later and started the engine, silent with anger and frustration.   
  
She moved as far as she could away from him, away from his reeking aroma of power as she rolled down the window and turned the radio on. She remembered long ago that she was in a truck with someone named VT, and how she had hated the music the woman had listened too. Now Faye turned the volume high and let the chorus of screams, bass guitars, and drums fill the car.   
  
Spike was obviously annoyed as he turned the volume down so it wasn't deafening. "Faye-" He began.   
  
"Spike, I am not here because I want to be. I hate you to tell the truth. So shut up and drive," she turned to look out the window. The wind hit her face like her words hit him. He was silent as he drove, and sped through stop lights and stop signs, past buildings and apartments. "You're such a safe driver," she said sarcastically.   
  
He ignored her and hit the gas harder.   
  
"Damnitt, wanna get stopped by the police!" She almost screamed at him. He didn't slow down. "Fine, get a goddamn speeding ticket. I couldn't care less," she hissed and turned the music up high once more. She lingered outside the window, and saw the flashing lights behind them in her side-view mirror even before she heard the echoing siren._ Damnitt.   
  
_Spike sped down the street as the cop car went after him, he was silent even as he increased his speed to a lightening flash. The buildings became nothing but blurs. Faye turned to him angrily. His eyes were filled with frustration and rage. _Goddamnitt, _she hissed to herself. Alright, this was the last straw.   
  
"Slow down, you moron before I blow your friggen brains all over this stupid car!" She screeched as she pointed her gun to his forehead. He didn't even flinch as she let the clip snap into place. "SPIKE, STOP!" She screamed. Rage flashed through her body, everything became more and more heavy on her soul. She had only been around him a few minutes and already her life had erupted into a hell.   
  
The siren was getting closer, the flashing lights brighter. She hit the trigger with an ounce of pressure, her hand shaking. She had to do it, she could do it...  
  
She turned to the back window and shot the back windshield into shards of glass flying like razors. The cop car swerved to avoid the glass on the street. And then she was shooting at the cop and blew his windshield to the same transparent knives of death searching for blood. She shot once more and hit the man in the shoulder. The cop car sped off the street and ran into the nearest building, exploding into flames.   
  
Blood pumped through her body as she pointed the gun once more to Spike's forehead, pulling back the hammer. "Slow this fucking car down, before I send it into a fiery hell like the one back there," she said slowly, carefully, and deadly. She'd die but at least he'd be going to Hell with her. He deserved to die, he deserved to hurt like she'd hurt for six months.  
  
Surprisingly he slowed and she sat back turning off the music and basking in the air of silence. She removed her empty clip from her gun and threw it out the window, reaching in her pocket and snapping a full one in. She could feel her senses reeling, the adrenaline in her body leaving her, her heart slowing to a normal beat as her body relaxed.  
  
"Faye, are you going to ever forgive me?" He asked angrily. His face was white with rage, and something else that made her want to hug him and say 'Yes, I forgive you.'   
  
She hated him for making her feel that. Things weren't as simple as they were back then. Things became complicated, and she wanted it to stay that way. Forgiveness wasn't something she gave out like post cards nowadays. Her trust was even harder to achieve, and that was the way she liked it. So distant and cold so no one could hurt her.   
  
"No," she said shortly and turned the radio back on.   
  
  
  
  
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	3. CHAPTER 3

**_Disclaimer_**: CB not mine.. sighs   
  
**NOTE:** Man I must be out of my mind. I like to write in the middle of the night uh huh. Geeze, watch for all the mistakes, sorry if there are alot!! Oh thanks to my readers, you are the reason I write my chapters so fast. I am a big reader myself, and I know how it feels to have to wait for a chapter. It's like slow torture, well for me it is. More reviews I get the faster I write!! Thanks so much for reading!!!  
~VT~  
  
Chapter Three  


  
He could feel the blood dripping down his chin, down over his lips that were cracked and dry. He coughed and the broken ribs inside his body screeched in pain, his whole chest feeling as if someone dropped a dead weight on him. More blood filled his mouth and sprayed from his mouth as he coughed harder, groaning in pain, in weariness. His hands were tied behind his back, his feet chained to the floor, as he sat in the iron chair of the dark room.  
  
"Don't die on me," she said as she reached over and touched his cheek lightly with the end of her knife. The metal was cool, was dangerously sharp. "I want you to stay alive, or should I say _Spike_ wants you to stay alive," she laughed coldly as she let the edge of her knife trace the scar on his face.   
  
He didn't flinch as he stared coldly into her eyes. "What the hell do you have against Spike? What the hell did he ever do to you?" He was angry, full of rage that he was being used to trap his partner, friend, and little brother. He felt guilty even when he had nothing to feel guilty about. He hated her more for making him feel that.  
  
Her eyes darkened for an instant as his words registered in her mind, but they soon frosted over with indifference, emptiness. "You don't have to know the reasons_ why _you are bait. You just need to know that when this is over, I will have my revenge." She smiled again, but the movement held no emotion.   
  
He was confused with anger, frustration. "I have a right to know," he said as he spat on the floor. The taste of blood was making him sick, scorching his parched throat. "I have a right to know why you are doing all this."  
  
The next thing he felt was a heel of a boot across his jaw. His teeth tore into his lower lip as he grunted with pain. "You don't have rights here. You have _nothing _here, you _barely_ even have a voice." She spoke hot-tempered. She looked him in the eyes, her anger a fiery halo over the irises.   
  
"Why Spike?" He was persistent, he didn't want to give up on finding the truth. He had nothing better to do.   
  
"I don't want to answer your questions, I just want you to keep your thoughts to yourself." She walked over to the one side of the room. Her stance was cold. "I didn't come here to talk, anyway."  
  
"Then why are you here?" He asked as he picked his head up and stared at her.   
  
She smiled, then. Evilly and merciless. She spun and stabbed her knife through his shoulder and he yelled out in pain. "Because, Jet. I love it when you scream."   


  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  


  
"Faye, we need to talk," Spike's voice over the intercom interrupted her sleep. She stirred and then sighed.  
  
Spike's Swordfish was in front of her Red Tail as they flew threw space. Spike had set the coordinates to the Cowboy Bebop, that wandered alone in the black universe.   
  
"We have nothing to talk about," She said as she switched on the small view screen in her ship. Space floated around her as it held her softly in it's cold embrace. Spike stared at her through the fog of the screen. His different colored eyes were sincere, and their effect on her made Faye scold herself.   
  
"Faye, we're in space for at least another hour. We might as well talk," he said as he turned off his screen and left her watching static. His voice came over the intercom once more. He had only wanted to know she was there and willing to listen. "Faye, we're going to have to talk to find Jet."  
  
_I know we are. I know I am going to have to forgive you if we are going to rescue Jet from whatever trouble he may be in. But I'm scared, Spike. Scared that if I let you back in you'll slam the door in my face when you leave again. Because, Spike, I know your kind, you have no home in people's hearts, you leave and go as you please. _"What do you want to talk about?" She asked lighting a cigarette. She was tired, and weary and if he wanted to talk, _he _could do all the talking while she went back to sleep. He'd never know.  
  
"The last six months," he said.   
  
"Do you think I want to know what happened to you or something? Because frankly, Spike, I don't give a damn where you were," she lied. She was curious about what had happened, it was hard to even realize that in her heart. Now that the anger was wearing down, she was starting to think normally again, whatever normal was. She was still mad at him and the coldness was still around her shoulders, but rationally she knew she needed to help him find Jet despite her feelings. Rationally, she knew she had to grit her teeth and bear working with Spike, and she knew if she let herself, she could stop caring that Spike was even with her every step of the way trying to achieve her forgiveness. She'd just shut off the emotions.   
  
She had learned that she could turn off any of her emotions except for anger. Rage was her down fall nowadays.  
  
"Faye, I want to know how _you've_ been. I haven't come to you to tell you the story of my life, and you know that," he said in his usual get-with-it tone.   
  
She sighed. "Ask me what you want but I'm not here to tell you the story of my life either," she said blowing smoke gracefully out of her crimson lips. She rested her forehead on her hand as she let her voice rip the silence without even waiting for a question. "When you left I stayed for barely even a little awhile. Things just got too painful, full of memories and all. So I left a day after you did. I couldn't think, or sleep, or concentrate, thinking you weren't coming back." She sighed and took a breath. Her voice was so emotionless. "It's not like you meant a helluv alot to me," she said making her point clearly. "You just meant a helluv alot to the people that were in my life. You were the heart of our little group, Spike. And then you turned your back on us and ripped us apart."   
  
Spike was silent.   
  
"Yeah, so after that I just wandered around. I got quite a few bounties, got quite alot of money, paid most of my debts." She brushed the hair out of her eyes as she put her cigarette out in the ash tray she had put on the side of her dash board. "I forgot about you," she lied. "And I decided not to let anyone hurt me the way you did again."   
  
She smiled sadly. "Before I knew it, six months had gone by, and then there you were. You just walked back into my life somehow, and now I'm not even sure if I want you there," she said as she sighed and rested her back on the seat. "I thought I wanted you there, to make my life meaningful again, by bringing the heart you ripped away back into my home, but after all this time I forgot what home is, what even a heart is." She fell silent. She was filled with regrets and with a darkness that clouded her life every time she opened her eyes.  
  
"Faye, I'm sorry." Spike said after a moment.   
  
"You can say sorry all you want, Spike. Sorry doesn't take back the hole you put in my life. Sorry can't take back the hell I went through the night you left." She was cold, angry again that he tried to take back in words what couldn't be erased. And what did she want him to do? Beg on his hands and knees for forgiveness?   
  
"I don't know what to say. I mean what the hell do you want me to say?"   
  
"Don't say anything you can't take back. Don't even _try_ to take back anything you did with words, Spike. Things don't work like that," she said as she closed her eyes. _I wish they did. I wish I could say that I forgive you. That I can forget, but I can't and I'm sorry.   
  
_"What happened to you?" She asked. She was too curious, too scared that if she had time to think then she would welcome him back into her life. In any case, despite her feelings, her brain told her not to let him back in. It was dangerous, he was hands off material.  
  
"I thought I died." His voice was simple. "But I had to die to know I was truly alive, I guess." There was a pause. "I went to Vicious, killed so many people just to kill him in the end. I wanted to die there, wanted to fade away because without Julia, I had no reason to dream, to live." He sounded as if he were talking in that left behind dream.   
  
Faye lit another cigarette. _Julia..._  
  
"I fell into a black void, into a place so cold all I could think about was getting warm. And then I woke up and Jet was there telling me that I was alive, that he was so happy that I was there and not six feet under ground.   
  
"He told me someone had called him from Mars and told him I was there at the hospital there, alive. He told me he didn't know who rescued me, he didn't know who saved me." Spike sighed heavily. "He didn't know anything. Not one damn thing"   
  
"I had only minor injuries, but my will to live was weak, almost no-existent. But I visited the Red Dragons the day I got released and found they needed me. They needed guidance because the society was too large to just expel. So my will to live became for the Red Dragons sake, and for a silent promise I had made to someone before he died." An image of Shin dying in his arms flashed through his mind. Shin was one of the main reasons he was alive...  
  
"Jet and I went on from where we left off, bounty hunting, and I working with the Red Dragons in-between. Then one day while I was away Jet disappeared from the Bebop. I came back and found the place torn to pieces and no sign of him anywhere." Spike sounded regretful.   
  
"What made you come to me?" Faye opened her eyes as she crossed her arms. His story lacked a detail or two and she picked it up right away.  
  
Spike was silent for a very long time. Then, "You were the only person I could think of to help me," he said tiredly.   
  
He was lying. But Faye let it slide, she wasn't in the mood for arguing at the moment. "Where's your precious Red Dragons to help you?" She sneered. She hated that his past was part of his future now. He had sought so hard to forget it and now he lived for it's sake.   
  
"I don't use their resources for personal reasons," he said matter-of-factly.   
  
"Bullshit!" She said as she sat straight up. "Jet could be dying, and you could easily find him faster if..."   
  
"We're here," Spike said coldly.   
  
Faye looked over her shoulder and say the bulky form of the Cowboy Bebop come into view. "You said we were going to be there in an hour or so, it was only about twenty minutes ago!"   
  
"I got you to talk to me, didn't I?" He asked lightly.   
  
"You're such an asshole," she said cursing angrily. She set her ship for docking sequence as the Bebop came closer. If he had been in her reach she would have kicked his ass.   
  
"Yeah, I live to make your life hell," Spike answered coldly.   
  
That was it, he was going to get it. She accelerated and rammed her ship into his. Metal rocketed everywhere as Spike cursed on the intercom. How dare he be so insensitive to everything he did to her, was doing to her.   
  
"Faye, what's your fucking problem!" He yelled. "Jet's not here to fix the damages!"   
  
Rage shifted through her body. "Yeah, I know. Your ship only works for you when you kick it." Her voice was so cold.   
  
"I am going to kick your ass, Faye!"   
  
"Fuck you, Spike. Fuck you."   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. CHAPTER 4

**_Disclaimer: _**CB not mine. Man I wish I could just say this at the beginning of the whole friggen story so I wouldn't have to keep writing it. URgh!  
NOTE: I don't know if I should be happy that this story has gotten more reviews than any of my other ones. Either this one is ok or the other ones just really really suck! Or maybe it's the fact that Julia is the main character...and in your next reviews answer me this. WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE JULIA?? I mean all she did was fall in love with Spike, and hey guess what HE fell in love with her too!!!  
Aight out, writing late again, sorry for all the mistakes!  
~VT~  
  
Chapter four  
  


"Faye, you really have one bitchy attitude," he said examining his ship and then groaning. "Look all these scratches!" His jaw dropped as he examined the longest and deepest one. "Faye, look at this!"   
  
Faye floated in the absence of gravity upside down staring at her own ship, barely caring about the 200 wong repairs hers needed as well. "Give me a break, Spike. The Sword Fish has gone through more shit than a few scratches, and you know it," she said tiredly. She was so tired, all she wanted to do was sleep, all she needed was sleep. And here he was making her life a total nightmare, ranting about his ship that was a piece of junk anyway.   
  
Spike put his hand on his forehead as he tucked his other hand in his pocket. "I hope Ed is as great a mechanic as Jet was," he mumbled. "Damn you, Faye. You're such a bitch!"   
  
"Ed? She's here?" Faye turned right side up her hair falling across her face, blinding her with purple for an instant. She pretended she didn't hear his insult as she brushed her hand through her silken hair and stared at an annoyed Spike.   
  
"No, I just _felt like _saying Ed was here, " he said sarcastically. "Of course she's here, you weren't the only one I tracked down to help find Jet. Don't give yourself so much credit, Faye." He smiled and turned away from her, expecting a retort, one that she did not give as she turned from him.   
  
She was too tired to react, to be sucked into yet another argument with the idiotic pilot. And anything would have been better than the cold retreat she gave him when she opened the door to the hallway and floated out. She didn't want to play emotion games anymore. Her emotions were dried, and empty. She'd come to find Jet not let Spike play around with her head and feelings, and she wasn't playing any games she didn't want to play anymore.  
  
"Faye!" He called as the door slid closed, as she stumbled in the midst of trying to grab the handle that would pull her to her old room. She idly wondered if it was still as she had left it. She hoped it was, her soft white sheets were the only thing she was looking foreword to at the moment.   
  
She grabbed the handle and soon it was pulling her down the hallway to where she wanted to be. The absence of gravity pulled at her, caressed her, comforted her cold and lifeless body. She wanted to go, she wanted to stay, she wanted to sleep, and she wanted to keep her eyes open. She didn't know what she wanted at the moment, but she wanted _something_, anything, to stop her from thinking to herself. When she thought to herself she thought too hard about things she couldn't change, things she needed to do but her heart cried out in fury against.   
  
What she wanted most at the moment was to forgive Spike. To make things like they were six months ago. She didn't like feeling the hurt, pain and anger. It was making her feel dead inside and while one part of her cried that that was what she wanted, another part gently told her that she was wrong, that she needed to forgive and forget.   
  
But to forgive and forget all that pain,....She didn't know if she could just forget. She had remembered for six months, and it was part of her life, part of her future. And so what if she was remembering a lie, remembering something that only hurt because she wanted it to? She didn't want to let it go, she couldn't let it go, so was her suffering her own cause?   
  
Yes, but she was doing what she had to do to not to get hurt again.  
  
_Stop thinking! _She screamed inside her head. She was getting a master headache, one that was focusing and unfocasing her vision. She felt so light, so faint. Her hand slipped from the handle and it went on without her.   
  
_No, wait, _she wanted to cry. But she knew she couldn't tell a machine that only knew orders to stop when it was programed to go somewhere. Was she programed like that small artificial machine? Was she programed to forever cause herself pain?   
  
She could barely breathe, her whole body felt so light. And then the world went black.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  


  
_"Faye. Faye." A voice called her name and she opened her eyes to light, blue, then green, then red. It changed between every color in the rainbow, and that was all she was.   
  
Then everything focused and she found herself in a church before a beautiful stained glass window, one that held no face but fragments of colors, none exactly alike. She was entrapped in it's reflection, entrapped in the worlds that each color held. She was trapped and for some reason she didn't care.   
  
"Faye.."  
  
The voice called her, she wanted to answer but how? She reached out to touch the glass, not even knowing her hand was outstretched until she felt soft smooth coldness beneath her fingers. It didn't feel like anything she'd ever known, it was there, it was soft and yet it wasn't there and it wasn't soft.   
  
"Faye, what do you want?"   
  
I_ want to wake tomorrow and not care that I may live or die._ Her thoughts traveled like words, and was in the open before she could take them back.   
  
"Who are you, Faye?"   
  
_I am what I want to be, but I don't know what I want. I don't know who I am, I wish I knew, I wish I understood._  
  
"Why do you wake every morning not wanting to live, not wanting to die? Why do you just want to wake for the sake of waking?"   
  
_How do you know how I work? How do you know I feel that? Who are you?  
_  
"I am you, you are I. We are one, Faye. I want to know who I am, what I am. I want to know love again, I want to know peace. I want to know the comfort of being loved in a way that I have never been loved before. Won't you let me?"   
  
_Let you what? _  
  
"Love."   
  
_No.   
_  
The lights danced over her face, over her body. Their warmth searching for the soul she hid deep behind the darkness of her life. Then a figure appeared in front of her, and the lines of her face blurred then sharpened and soon Faye was looking at Faye. One that was dangerous yet kind in every way. White mixed with black in contrast to the colors behind her. She noticed that her counterpart's clothes received no glares from the stained glass windows.   
  
"Why are you pushing every thing good that happens to you away? All you wanted is here at your feet, take it, please." The voice was spoken but her counterpart's lips did not move, her hair was longer than Faye's hair but the same shade of purple was still gleaming in the strands. The woman before her was not Faye and she knew it.  
  
_I can't. I don't want to be hurt again_. Faye stood, she hadn't even know she'd been sitting. She felt the folds of silk around her body but found she couldn't take her eyes away from her counterpart.   
  
"You hurt everyday. You hurt whether or not Spike leaves or not. Why not let happiness become you, for it does become you and I. Happiness for a little while is better than pain the whole time." The woman's eyes were filled with compassion, tears.   
  
_You want me to welcome to only be hurt? You don't sound like me._ Faye walked backwards a few steps, not really walking, not really floating.   
  
"No, I want you only to live. I want only to live. You want only to taste the life that you swore you'd never touch again." Wind blew the woman's hair wildly around the her face, yet Faye felt nothing,   
  
_Live only to die?_ She looked around for the source of the voice that hadn't come from her counterpart's mouth but everything became a blurs of color once again and she was left in the silence of an answer. She waited.   
  
"Live to understand." The voice was fading as were the colors. The figure stared at her though the colors were all but gone.   
  
_Understand what?_ Faye reached for the feel of the woman across from her wanting to know if she was real or illusion.  
  
"Who you are."  
  
Then all went black.   
  
_

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


Faye woke with a start. She was still floating in the hallway, her hair waves over her face as she stared down at the ground. She could faintly hear Spike calling for her, but nothing registered in her mind as she drifted, not wanting to move, not wanting to think, not wanting to feel.   
  
She had met herself in her dream. She had confronted the unsure part that wanted to know who she was. And who was she? _She_ wanted to know! But why couldn't she just figure it all out? She was old enough to know who she was, she _should _have known who she was by now!  
  
_No self pitying. I've been doing it for too long. Trying to hold on to the past I can't change. Why do I that? Why can't I let it all go? _Faye struggled to focus, to get everything together. Her soul felt so heavy, she felt so tired despite her small nap. She needed a cold drink, she needed....  
  
Someone turned the gravity on as she fell hard to the floor.   
  
Everything woke up inside her and when she stood she took out a pack of cigarettes. Sensibility was coming back to her. Dreams meant _nothing _to her, what she wanted was _perfectly_ clear, and as for who she was...well she knew who she was, she just hadn't gotten around to glancing at that point yet.   
  
_You're so full of shit, _she said to herself as she lit up. Oh she knew that part of herself for sure as she walked the rest of the way to her room. She knew that everything was full of shit these days, it didn't matter if her sorry life just added up with those statistics.   
  
"Faye," Spike was behind her. How long had he been there? She turned softly.   
  
Could she forgive him? Could she go on and forget all that he did? Everything in her dream came back but she didn't want to remember because the voice she heard had been the voice of reason. But reason didn't count when a person betrayed you, did it? She wished she knew, she wished she had all the answers.  
  
He stared at her with his weird stare that made her stomach do flip-flops. "What?" she said, trying to sound indifferent. She didn't do a very good job. _Please, not yet. I can't forgive him yet. _Her heart twisted because all she wanted to do was hug him. Her whole body tired of her trying to fight it, fight what her heart wanted.   
  
He was back, her soul cried. He wasn't dead! He was there for her, he was going to be there for her for a long time, wasn't he? He _wasn't dead! _Why couldn't she forgive him? Everything told her to forgive him, to forget everything and start over. She wanted to do everything her heart told her to but her moral code was so tight...No, she couldn't forgive. She couldn't...She was so afraid...  
  
"Faye, please. I'm sorry. You got me back by wrecking my ship. You have to forgive me if we are going to ever find Jet," he sounded so desperate and she felt herself shivering with cold realization.   
  
Would he ever go through hell, beg on his knees, just for the sake of _her_ forgiveness and not for Jet's safety? She knew she was being selfish but she had to know that he was asking for her forgiveness for Faye and not for Jet.   
  
She couldn't accept his apology yet because she didn't know where she stood in his life.  
  
"We will find Jet," She said coolly, but not so cold as every time before. "But I can't, I-" she couldn't' say she'd never forgive him because she knew that wasn't true. It was all a matter of time... Time played such dirty tricks and she wanted to hurt something then but when she looked up into his eyes she knew she couldn't deny him again, she couldn't shake away his apologies anymore.   
  
Why was he turning her back to the old Faye?  
  
"Damnitt, Faye,.."  
  
She turned from him, not sure that her heart could take all the emotions she'd felt in one day after not feeling so much in six months. "Spike, ...I-I want to forgive you, -I do. I can't. I can't forgive what you did to me. You were one of my only friends and I never really knew what betrayal meant until you left." She could feel her arms shaking, her heart throbbing. She was expressing her feelings, feelings she hid so long in her secret heart of hearts.   
  
He touched her shoulder. "Faye, I never meant to betray you. I had- I had obligations to others. To people I thought mattered most to me," he said softly. "Besides, I never thougth you cared so much.." He said that so lightly.  
  
"Whatever," she said angrily through blinding tears. _They meant more to you than us_, she thought bitterly as she tore back a sob as her heart reopened old wounds, as her stomach opened in five places of anxiety. The memory of everything she felt when he walked out that door to die came back to her. Everything she had wanted to do, wanted to say, wanted to scream, came crashing around her, came waving around her face and her memory. "They meant more to you than life, and we were left to live in Death's wake." She turned to him tears in her eyes. "You gave all you had to us, you forgot your past. And then when it came up again all you could think about was- was leaving and ruining the lives that based theirs on yours!" She was hysterical. All those feelings, all those tears and screams came rushing out of her.   
  
He stared at her, understanding in his eyes, and she hated him for thinking he'd ever understand. She pounded on his chest, angry that he be there when he should have been there six months ago, when he should have denied what was happening and choose Jet and the Bebop and her. "Damn you, Spike! You made my life a living hell! You built it up only to crush it all down!" She couldn't see through the tears, but he held her as she fought him.   
  
"Faye- calm down! Damnitt, you'd think the world had ended!" he was saying.   
  
"Calm down, Faye," she mimicked. _The world _did _end when you left. My world died._ "Yeah, want to know something? I calmed down for six months, six fucking months! I calmed down thinking you'd never come back, I calmed down thinking I could never be the old Faye anymore because assholes like you would just walk in and out of my life and tear it apart like you did!" She stopped struggling as she fell limply into his arms. Her anger was shivering her insides to mush as it simmered down. Sobs were all she could feel as she held tightly to his shirt. Believing in that moment that he was a dream. "I was calm even though I just wanted to see your face again," her voice was a whisper. "I wanted to cry and scream and kill and hurt, but I couldn't. I tried but I couldn't. And this is what I am because of you. Half murderer, half child, half woman, half orphan."   
  
Spike held her, his whole face mystified. And then she pulled away, her mascara running and her face red. "You happy? You know what I wanted to say to you for the last months so be satisfied with that. Now go and get this ship ready to find Jet!" She spun on her heal, as if nothing happened as if she had never said a word to him.   
  
He watched silently until she rounded the corner. Anger and confusioon sweeped over his soul. Even after she disappeared he kept staring because even after all that, she had never said she forgave him...  
  
  
  
  
  
NOTE: I know that was the most horrible worst chapter in the world!!!! It was so bad and I have to go to bed!! Sorry for all the icky mistakes and the confusing parts, but I'll look over it tomarrow! Peace out folks!  
~VT~  
  
  
  
  
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	5. CHAPTER 5

**_Disclaimer: _**CB not mine.   
NOTE: Hey, thanks for more reviews. I love getting reviews it lights up the bad days I have just sitting wondering what life would be "IF'. Uh, I can't find where I misspelled friggen' tell me please in future reviews!! Uh what else? Oh yeah, as far as keeping in characters, such as Spike, I tried , er am trying to view them as they would be after a life and death situation. I added a few more curses and stuff to make Spike more easy going and less sensitive, and I admit he was getting overly sensitive in the last chapter. BAD ME!! But if anything, the way I see Spike after almost dying 'again' and loosing everything he once lived for he is very passive and more caring about the things around him. But that's just me. In any case thanks for reading.  
~VT~  
  
Chapter Five  


  
She turned the shower on and stood as the steam from the water filled the bathroom. The mist held her body tightly, soothing her racing pulse and pounding heart. Now he knew, but that didn't mean he understood. It didn't matter anyway because in her mind he wasn't allowed to understand either way.   
  
She walked into the shower as she folded her clothes neatly on the floor. The droplets stung and burned but she felt them as tiny irons melting away the wrinkles in her feelings and thoughts, instated of scorching tears of water they really were. She stood in the midst of trying and giving up, taking him back and throwing him away.   
  
_Don't think. Thinking is beginning to hurt_, she thought softly. She began to hum softly. Trying to lift her reopened pain away like the rising steam, the fading echoes of her voice. "Been a fool, been a clown, lost my way from up and down..." Already she was beginning to feel better, starting to feel confident in who she was, what she wanted.   
  
Then she heard a sound behind the shower curtain, and a blurry form came into view. Faye stiffened and stopped washing her hair as she slowly peeked to see who it was. All she saw was the flash of red hair and all she heard was the slamming of the bathroom door.   
  
Faye was angry that anyone would come in while she needed privacy. And if it had been Spike....She pictured all the little tortures she'd do before she'd kill him. But then again Spike didn't have red hair.   
  
She quickly finished washing and jumped out of the shower, grabbing her towel as she stepped onto the floor matt. She dried off, realizing Ed had red hair and Ed was supposedly on the ship. Faye reached for her clothes wondering why Ed had come into the bathroom. Her fingers searched for material, but all they found was air...  
  
"ED!!"   
  
Ed smiled outside the door, Faye's clothes in hand as she pranced around the ship. She did a couple flips because she knew she was being bad and she was excited by that fact. Edward liked to cause mischief nowadays. Edward liked to be a pain in the ass. "Ed got Faye Faye's clothes. Ed has Faye Faye's clothes!"   
  
Faye came out in her towel. Her face angry and red. "Edward, give me back my clothes, you little monster!" Faye almost shouted. She could barely speak audibly she was so mad. She reached for the little twerp and her towel almost fell. She immediately grabbed it and held in place with one hand.   
  
Ed was rolling on the floor hysterically. "Faye can't catch Ed!"   
  
Faye could feel her left eyebrow twitching as she smiled with clenched teeth. "When Faye gets a hold of Ed, Ed will be choking out in space!" Faye hissed as she grabbed for Ed again. "Give me back my clothes, now!"   
  
Ed jumped out of the way and moved passed her to the left. She held Faye's clothes like a flag as she swung around like an acrobat. "Ed too fast for Faye Faye! Ed too fast for Faye Faye!" She was smiling with a terrible glint in her eyes as Faye chased her around the small room.   
  
"Give me back my clothes!" Faye pounced and the two girls went crashing down, Faye's towel falling a bit as Ed squirmed underneath her. She grabbed her clothes from Ed's hands and smiled in victory. Then she saw the feet in front of her face and blood raced through her cheeks.   
  
"Nice view of the full moon, Faye," Spike said turning away and going into the kitchen.   
  
Faye's ass was totally uncovered as she lay on top of Ed, clothes clenched in hand. It took her a minute to recover from embarrassment before she stood and wrapped the towel tightly around her body. "You just _want_ that full moon, Spike," Faye said sarcastically angry. Ed was giggling in her hands as she sat on the yellow couch.   
  
"Oh, yeah Faye. I've seen half the moon so many times in those skimpy yellow shorts you used to wear. I could barely contain myself most of the time," Spike was overly dramatic as he made groaning noises in the kitchen. Then he grew silent. "Yeah, right, Faye. If I ever had the slightest longing in my body for your ass I'd have to castrate myself."  
  
"Faye Faye got dismissed!" Edward said mixing up her kid-like tone with older dialect.   
  
"Shut up, Ed before I rip out your tongue," Faye said glaring at the innocent eyes with utter jealousy that one could remain so innocent despite the hardships around her. She sighed as she walked back into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, locking it this time.   
  
When she came out she crossed her arms over her breasts, as if to hide the drooping neck line she favored so much. For some reason she felt overly conscious of her body, and the fact that she was insecure made her uneasy. Spike came around the corner, a beer in his hand as he turned to Ed, who was working on her computer. "How's the search for Jet going?"   
  
"Mmmmm...MPU found no results. Ed sorry. Edward keep trying."   
  
Faye hadn't noticed before, but Ed had grown taller, more prettier. Her red hair was longer, her brown eyes shinier, and her body more developed. She wore a white shirt that was loose and big with a black leather vest over it. The shirt was short and her flat stomach showed a silver piercing above her baggy black jeans. Ed wore silver loops earrings, small ones, two on each lobe, and a chain, small and sufficient, hung around her neck. No, Ed, though still a child, didn't seem the same Ed as before, and it hurt Faye to see that things she thought would always be the same changed, grew from what was and what wasn't.   
  
"Ed, where's Ein?" Faye said coming up behind Spike and staring at the screen of the makeshift computer. Ed stopped typing, and her shoulders sagged as her hair covered her face and eyes. Spike nudged Faye softly on the arm and whispered in her ear. "Ein died. He was unknowingly trapped in a plane that Ed was paid to sabotage." Spike stared at her and told her silently that Ed blamed herself for what happened. "I'll tell you more later," Spike mouthed, and Faye nodded slightly.   
  
She crouched down and gave Ed a hug. It was more emotion she showed in a long time, and it was more understanding than anything. She knew what it was like to loose something so important to the soul. "I'm glad I get to be here with you again, Ed. I missed you," Faye said half truthfully. Sure, Faye had missed her for the sake of missing what one looses and never appreciated, but she never missed the annoying voice and ways of the child. But those made everything Ed was and Faye appreciated all that with proud admiration of a loving sibling.   
  
Ed was limp in her arms and then shrugged, her smile returning, yet still pained and hurt. "Edward missed Faye Faye, too." She smiled up with golden eyes of innocence that held the hint of forced maturity in the darkness of pain.   
  
Faye smiled, ruffled Ed's hair and straightened. She turned to Spike who was drinking his beer and staring at her with mirth in his eyes. "What?" Faye asked annoyed as Ed began typing again.  
  
"I don't know. You just seemed so much a mother there, and Faye, the last thing I ever thought about you was being a mother," Spike said laughing and drinking some more.   
  
Faye walked up to him and took his beer, sipping some and smiling. "Oh? And what were your first thoughts about me? How much fun it would be to ruin Faye's life?" Faye thrusted the can back to him angrily.   
  
Spike threw the can on the floor so hard Ed stopped typing and Faye stared. "Damnitt, Faye! I didn't come here for some fucking grand old reunion!" Spike's eyes were dangerously narrowed. "I came here to find Jet, not beg on my hands and knees for your forgiveness I could live without. I said I was sorry what the hell more do you want me to say!" Spike shot her a hard glance. "Want me to say 'I wish the past didn't happen.' ? Or, 'I wish I never confronted Vicious and instead ran from him the rest of my life,?" Spike shook his head. "Do you want me to wish that I _did_ die!" He ran his fingers through his hair.   
  
"I don't know what more to say, Faye. I'm trying but you, a cold hearted bitch these days, won't even hear the words 'I'm sorry' come out of my mouth."   
  
Faye stared at him. Her wounds were still open, and new ones were opening with guilt.   
  
"Faye, I have no fucking clue what you want me to say, to do!" Spike looked at her angrily. "I obviously can't do anything to make you happy, and you're making my life a living hell, so either one, get your ass together and take this like a real woman, or get the hell out!"   
  
"Real woman? You mean like your Julia?" Faye asked bitterly. Spike's eyes hinted pain but gleamed coldly then.   
  
"Julia was a woman who died because there was no where else to live. You, Faye, you have places to live, but you choose to live in death!" Spike turned from her. "Do whatever the hell you want. I'm sick of begging." Spike stormed out of the room and disappeared into the hallway leaving Faye half cold and half warm.   
  
Ed stared up at her, eyes wide and she turned her head back to her computer. "Faye Faye should be happy that green haired man alive. Least he alive, Ein not," Ed said sadly. The sadness in Ed's voice sounded so lost and desperate, so helpless it hurt Faye to even hear it in her memory. Faye went over and hugged her tightly.   
  
"Faye Faye has to work things out in her head. She's really happy that Spike is back. But she's scared. Please, say Ed won't be scared to love anymore because of what happened with Ein." Faye said and hugged the child close, wishing that she could take away Ed's pain.   
  
"Faye Faye, need go talk to Spike. Fay Faye need to forgive, 'cause what if Spike Spike dies and doesn't come back next time?" Ed tore away from Faye's embrace and sat on the couch, jumping and flipping her way there. The little girl was serious as she stared Faye in the eyes. "Faye Faye need to appreciate that Spike is here with her now, doesn't matter where he was 'cause now's all that matters. Spike here now, so hold onto Spike so he doesn't fall away again," Ed said softly. "Faye Faye hold tight to Spike."   
  
Faye turned and was out the door before Ed could say anymore. Edward had grown so mature and yet remained so young. Faye wished that for once in a while those two could actually mix and make Ed's life happy. But false hopes were all they appeared because one could not experience and still remain innocent to the world.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	6. CHAPTER 6

_  
* Disclaimer: CB isn't mine.   
NOTE: Ok this is the thing. I wanted to write a chapter before I left, and look at the time!!! Well, for me it's late as hell and I barely did my homework so this chapter, hopefully, will be kind of short. I don't know yet since I haven't started to write it yet. Forgive my mistakes, and I will try to get on the computer to write this weekend.   
~VT~  
NOTE2::: AHHHHH for all those who read it before the damn thing didn't download right so the end got messed up!!!!! SORRY!!!Damn itlaics aren't working so everything that is supposed to be italiced is in *  
~VT~*  
  
*Chapter six*_  


  
  
She walked the hallway, angry, tired, and confused. Yeah, sure she forgave Spike, she just didn't know how to say it all in words. How many men in her life begged for her forgiveness? How many men came back to life after being dead for six months?   
  
She pushed the purple locks out of her face, they were still damp with water like her soul was still damp with fear. She was scared to let him back in, she was scared and she knew she was being a coward. But she couldn't help it, she couldn't help but wonder what would happen to her if he left one more time, if he died again, how she would turn out. Would she become some monster she wouldn't even recognize in the mirror anymore, or would she fall so deep into depression she would never really feel alive again? She didn't know and that uncertainty killed the part that wanted so much to let Spike back into her life.   
  
But he was in her life anyway, whether she liked it or not. Whether he was forgiven or not, whether he was only a memory or really there in the flesh.  
  
And somehow everything became all about Faye. What Faye wanted then, what Faye wants now, what will Faye want next. In the end, she knew she always brought it down to what _she_ wanted. She thought about Faye but barely thought about Spike. How Spike felt, what Spike felt if the man could feel. Did he wish she never stepped back into his life? But wasn't it him who stepped back into hers? Was he just putting up with her just for his love of Jet?   
  
Faye felt guilt soak her into a shudder. Why did she care so much about it all, about him? Why was she still there on that ship? Why didn't she just leave?  
  
_*Jet*_. She could see the man's face in her mind and she could see it twisted into pain. That's why she was there, to prevent Jet from being hurt, to find Jet and kill whoever held him captive if that was the case. But she knew coming for Jet wasn't the only reason she had returned to the Bebop.   
  
Sure, Spike had been right about the ship being her home, but what she truly was back for, why she had truly wanted to return, was because the warmth of the home had lead her back. The fire that made her feel safe, made her feel alive, made her want to be happy, made her want to do good for what little it was all worth, made her feel secure even when everything around her was insecure, had touched her hand and carried her effortlessly over the bumps of life to the boundaries of kinship.   
  
She owed Spike as much as she owed Jet.   
  
She walked into his room and stood in the doorway. Déjà vu flashed through her as he clipped guns into place, loaded pistols, arranged grenades. She'd seen him like that when she came back to bring the message from Julia. It had been the second to last time she had last seen him.   
  
Again she found herself returning to the Bebop for Spike's sake.   
  
"I remember you were like this to bring me Julia's message," he said softly not turning. His voice sounded lost to memory, his hands stopped working as he touched the end of the gun with his right hand. He stood from his stool.   
  
"Spike, not yet. Please, not yet," she whispered.   
  
He spun, his eyes wild and his face angry. "Faye, I told you I don't you forgiveness anymore, I'm sick of begging, I'm-" but he didn't finish because she had wrapped her arms around him hugging him close.   
  
She could feel tears prick her eyes, prick her soul with pain as she let everything flow in a space and time void she couldn't stop. She didn't want to let him go, she didn't want to loose him to fate again, to something she had no control over. He held her life together, he was the reason she was who she was even if she didn't know who that was inside. He was most of her life that mattered most, because the past didn't matter anymore.   
  
"Faye, what's your problem?" He asked annoyed. She could feel the muscles under his shirt tighten. He didn't like be as close as he was to her, but she didn't care. She didn't want to let go, she didn't want to loose him, she didn't want to wake up if all she was experiencing was a dream.   
  
Tears soaked his shirt and soon she felt his arms around her and the sobs escaped her throat. Everything she had been holding back since the first time she saw him alive came rushing out of her, not violent this time, but gentle and bittersweet. It wasn't love that raced through her veins, and it was passion that beat through his, it was the sense of being home, being understood, being cared for with an intensity that flew in circles around them.   
  
"Faye, I don't know what the hell is going on with you, but could you please stop it. It scares the shit out of me when I see what I was in your eyes." His voice was hard and cold but his arms were soft and comforting. His embrace said everything he couldn't. And what was he trying to say?   
  
"I'm not you, Spike," she whispered into his shirt. Warmness was filling her with happiness, condeming her for feeling so right.  
  
He laughed because her tone had been the old Faye he knew. It was slightly annoyed, slightly bitchy, and slightly sarcastic. He pulled her away and looked into her eyes. "Faye, look at me." She lifted her eyes through tear soaked eyelashes. "Don't become so cold and lost. Because when you go to far over the edge, people die to bring you back," he said sternly. His face held no laughter, no mirth.   
  
She could only stare into his eyes that made her feel so odd. He could see who she was inside, it was written in those murky depths of his eyes. But she couldn't see who she was, she couldn't see her inner self when it was so obvious to others and her heart broke a hope that had been lit died away.   
  
Spike saw that fire go out of her eyes, saw something extinguish and he didn't like it. He didn't like the fact she was giving up. He pulled her closer staring harder into her eyes, trying to rekindle some light in their dark depths, trying to search for something that was already lost. "Faye, what the hell is wrong with you?"   
  
Her heart was fluttering, her whole life melting away. She didn't like the realization she was feeling, she didn't like the warm feeling her heart was sending over her body, the shivering, the ache to have him in her arms. She didn't like the need for him filling her soul with completeness. "Nothing," she whispered. God, she wished she _knew_ _what _was wrong with her.   
  
She moved away, pulled away from his reach. Then the anger came, the coldness and numbness that swept over her when anything good happened to her. It isolated her body from emotions, all the good kind that made her happy. She looked at him, his eyes puzzling, yet indifferent, mouth grimly set in a line yet perfectly shaped. He saw the change, understood it, and accepted it, but she couldn't do anything but let it all happen.  
  
She knew the feeling she'd been feeling, was still feeling under the icicles of emptiness that was slowly being filled.   
  
No, she wasn't, she wasn't going to feel for him more than what she ever felt for him. But he was staring at her the same way she was looking at him, as if timed stopped but only for them. As if night and day had become one and they were stuck in the middle of what was left. As if they were the only two people left on earth...  
  
She turned from him. "Have you any idea where Jet is?" she asked expressionless. She looked at the nearly bare shelves and began toying with a wrench she found on them. Her fingers shook, her while body shivered and she hoped Spike didn't notice.   
  
"No, Ed's looking through MPU now. Hopefully something will turn up." She faintly heard the clank and clicks of the guns.   
  
"Oh," was all she could say.   
  
There was silence, but not the thick or uncomforting kind, it was soft and thoughtful. It was silence of a world that knew peace only for a little while. And then the siren was going off and Spike was rushing up to the cockpit. She followed with hurried steps as her boots tripped on the first stair and twisted her ankle with a small crack. "Damn," she muttered as she finally reached the top.   
  
"What is it?" She asked rubbing her sore ankle. It hurt to walk on as she limped towards him, trying to hide the fact she was wounded.   
  
"Incoming ship." He stared out the window. A white ship, almost identical to Spike's Sword Fish came docking on the platform.   
  
"Who is it?" Faye asked looking at the beautiful painting of a red dragon on the side.   
  
"Ayutora Grustaki," he said coldly.   
  
"Who?" Faye said turning to see Spike's eyes glisten coldly.   
  
"She's an associate of mine. She works as one of the higher members of the Red Dragons."   
  
"You don't seem to like her too much," Faye said smiling for the sake of smiling. She didn't know what else to do, the only experience she had ever had with the Red Dragons had been bad so she didn't know what to expect.   
  
"Ayutora, she's- I don't know," Spike said taking out a cigarette. "She's annoying. _*Very*_ annoying," he said as he lit up.   
  
"What do you mean?" She asked.   
  
"You'll see," he said as he turned to go down the stairs to welcome the visitor.   
  
Faye tried to walk, but pain shot up her leg like an angry serpent. She knew the high heeled boots had been a bad idea but she had to think style before safety. "Spike," she called, angry that she had to rely on him for the small deed of walking.   
  
He turned and noticed her limp. "What did you do?" He asked annoyed.   
  
Anger surged through him. She wasn't going to ask for his help anymore, the bashing of pride wasn't worth his annoyance. "Nevermind," she said angrily as she limped with deep grimaces on her face.   
  
"Faye, what the hell did you do?" He asked as he noticed how bad her limp really was.   
  
"I don't fucking know!" She screamed out in frustration. "I think I sprained it or something!"   
  
Spike came up to her and tried to assist her but she pushed him away. "Go meet Ayutora. I'll get by, I always do," she said bitterly.   
  
Spike persisted. "Faye, you can't possibly walk down those stairs with that ankle of yours now stop being a pain in the ass and let me help you," he said softly yet angrily.   
  
Faye was indigent. "No!"   
  
"Faye!"   
  
"No, I can do it, now go away!" She practically screamed with pain and anger. Tears stung her eyes the pain hurt so bad and she was starting to think it wasn't just a sprained ankle.   
  
Spike looked at her and then walked down the stairs slowly. She waited until she heard the click of his shoes hit the bottom before she tried descending. Every step she took she felt determination pulsing her down through hell. She was walking through hell, but at least he wasn't walking with her. Pain walked by her side laughing at her as she stumbled and let the tears fall silently. She didn't need Spike she was doing it all by herself, she could do it...One more step...  
  
She tripped, the pain had become too much for her. She fell and landed in his arms which waited for her to fall straight into them. She was breathing hard, exhausted and angry she'd failed and he'd predicted that fact and stayed at the bottom of the stairs, waiting. "See if I wasn't here you'd be flat on your face, now c'mon Faye. If you let me help this would all be less painful." He had a hint of concern but Spike's voice was colder than ever.   
  
Faye shivered then allowed him to help her. She wasn't used to being helpless, but she secretly liked his arm around her waist as he lead her down the corridor. "What about Ayutora?" She asked breathing hard still. Pain was ripping with every light step she took. But with his touch she felt like it really didn't matter.  
  
Spike picked her up into his arms, noticing her pain through her voice. "Spike-!" She said surprised and angry, and for an instant she thrilled in his arms around her, thrilled in the pace her heart picked up just to be so close to him. She felt safe.   
  
She hated herself for feeling toward him at all.  
  
"Don't fight me, Faye, I need to get you to your room so I can get there in time to greet Ayutora. I don't trust Ed." His voice was hard, cold.   
  
"Don't kill yourself helping me," she said with hate. She didn't like the fact he acted like she had made him help her.   
  
"Faye," he said with anger.   
  
She ignored him until they were outside her room. She jumped out of his arms and landed on her good foot as she walked in and let the door slide close with a word of thank you. She hobbled to her bed and sat down, too tried to think, too tired to understand that through his indifference and her coldness she was falling in love with the man she swore she'd never let back in her life.   


_  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~_  


  
He couldn't see. She had blind folded him, and she'd left his body screaming for mercy. She'd stabbed him in every painful place in his body except the vital parts that would cause him to die. She hit every mark on target that would cause him the most pain, and everything he did and didn't do hurt him, made him want to die.   
  
He could feel a presence in the room, though it wasn't his captor's. He wished, in a dark vague way, it was the grim reaper. But he knew it wasn't, he knew God didn't have mercy like that. God really didn't care all that much about the evil that reaped itself on the earth.  
  
Dried blood plastered his parched lips, and ironicly not all that covered his mouth was his own. He could still hear the screams as she tortued the boy before him daring him to make the move he couldn't make bound to the floor and chair. She made the boy suffer, rubbing the boy's blood across his face as she spoke softly, like a mother trying to hold her will to a teenager's. "You can't save him," she had said. "You can't save Spike, and all you are good for is killing."   
  
The boy had lost so much blood, it was on the floor, on him, on her, and the stains burned him deep inside, tainted his already drenched soul. He felt so helpless, he couldn't do anything. But she smiled at the boy's half opened eyes, his limp frail body hanging on to life that was fading fast. "But instead of killing you, I kill him. Would you like it if I untied you so you could try to save this pathetic soul?" She had turned to him then, her eyes so cold, so empty. "Or would you run and be satisified that you were not the one being tortured?"   
  
He had told her plainly to go to hell, plainly to do whatever she wanted becuse he didn't care what the hell she was doing. "But you're wrong. You care that this innocent is dying because of you. You, who could be doing something to stop it all had you not been bound." Her voice held no mirth, but only enjoyment so cold it wasn't even emotion.  
  
She had made him feel guilty for something he couldn't help, couldn't prevent. She had suceeded in making him hate himself, hate his helplessness. And then she had hit him and knocked him out, tired of his awareness, tired of her games that never ended as long as his eyes were open.   
  
She didn't have any boundries. She was evil, if evil was even strong enough a word for her. She was pain and death all in one darked clothed figure of hell. He sighed knowing and praying for Spike and Faye. Praying that whoever his captor was didn't suceed in hearing the two's anguished screams of pain along with his own. Praying was all he could do.   
  
  
  
_*NOTE: I know pre-tty bad. Sorry. I lost ideas!! Horrible. But I'll write more when I get back. Check over the weekend I might get on and I might not. I'll try though! I missed alot of the **.s but I didn't have my glasses. Sorry again.  
~VT~*_  



	7. CHAPTER 7

_Disclaimer: CB is not mine.  
  
NOTE: Did everyone enjoy the last chapter? Becase it was a spur of the moment idea and this one is the same so it won't be thought out so well. Umm there will probably tons of mistakes too. No spell check this time ya know, on a different computer. Well here goes enjoy! I"VE ONLY HAVE TWENTY MINUTES TO WRITE THIS!!!  
~VT~_  
_  
Chapter seven_  


  
She found the first aid kit under her bed, full of dust and cobwebs. There hadn't been a time before when she had had to use it. She slowly and carefully removed her boot and wrapped the rather swollen looking limb in a white wrap, her hands shaking with the shocks of hurt and emotions that ran through her body simultaneously. She felt something inside her and she didn't want at all to look at it, to analyze it but it analyzed itself, it made her realize just how much she had missed Spike. Just how much he really meant to her.  
  
It hurt her to think that she was falling in love with him because that seemed so impossible, so remotely out of reach. She knew she would love head over heels only to be rejected if she let the feeling truly penetrate her heart. Spike couldn't be tamed, couldn't be taken and made ones own and she knew love in a way needed to tame both wild hearts in order to make them one. She knew he would feel imprisoned by love just as she felt she would be by his if in their wildest dreams there'd be even a possibility he'd feel the same way about her. She knew that Julia had been that only girl, the only one for Spike, Faye being nothing compared to her beauty, past, and understanding, nothing compared to the exotic goddess of love in Death.   
  
But she couldn't possibly be falling inlove with him! It just wasn't a possibility at all! She had been with him for so long before and had never felt an aounce of desire for him, and then all of a sudden...Why was he becoming all she could think about?   
  
_Because, _she answered herself. _He's the link to the past you've wanted so much. The moments you waited for so long just to relive for one day are in his wake and in your reach. He makes you feel complete because no matter how hard you fight the fact, he understands, He's been where you are now- wanting, dreaming to live a life different from the one that is being lived.   
  
_But she wasn't _supposed _to love him.   
  
She stared at her ankle dumbly for a few moments, trying to figure out what was going with her, why she was so confused about who she was and what she wanted lately. It was something she didn't like to think about, she didn't like to think so deeply in things but recently everything she said, or did, or felt needed an explanation in her brain, her soul, her heart because all cried out in frustration of one thing leading one way and another leading in a different direction. And in-between them other things were lost and memories were faded and she felt incredibly weary of what was being thrown at her. So indifferent had she become because of that, and even as the thought registered she found she didn't care.   
  
But the way Spike made her feel wasn't routine, wasn't so felt out that she was tired of the feeling. It was something new and it was something good, something magical that someone dreamed up and tried to write but couldn't. She felt so complete with him because when she looked into his eyes she felt he knew her, knew more than she knew herself and that fact was comforting despite her anger, despite the way she felt these days. She felt that if she looked into his eyes long enough that it might be possible to scrape away the indifference and see her own reflection of who she was.   
  
She wanted to stop thinking about him. She reminded herself that he made her life hell most of the time, made her life confused, he made her hate him even when she wanted to forgive him.   
  
_But that's the point, isn't it? _A voice asked her. _He makes you feel._  
  
She slipped her boot on and walked out her door, limping badly on her sprained ankle. She knew it wasn't broken but it could have been with all the pain each step caused her.   
  
She knew Spike, she knew him unconsciously by just being around him. She could smell his colonge, smell his scent, know his eye color exactly, know everything that was in her brain from the endless days she had spent with him. _And why feel now?_ She asked herself. Because she didn't need him before like she needed him now. It was that simple and it took her a few minutes to understand what exactly she was thinking.  
  
She walked down the hallway pain racing through her body. She loved Spike, it wasn't just a thought or an idea anymore, it was a soul crashing fact that made her want to fly through a sun filled sky. But she also knew blue skies always turned to rain.   
  
She could hear a high peppy voice from the main cockpit and sighed. _If this Ayutora girl is a powder puff sweetie I'm going to scream..._Faye looked in on the scene before her.  
  
A young girl, in her late teens stood in the middle of the room looking around. Her hair was wavy and presently held up in a pony tail by a black scarf on top of her head. Her hair was a fiery red, a red that looked like the dying ashes of embers. Her eyes were steely green, and her skin a milk white. Her nose was cute and her lips rosy and pink. She wore no make up, but her ears were heavily pierced with silver loops. She wore a white sweatshirt, tunic like with a black belt around her waist and the shoulders cut off so her black tank top straps could be seen. She wore black capris with white socks that stuck out of her black high healed boots. Faye could acutely feel her mouth hanging open. _What a get-up...  
  
".._I'm telling you Spike, this place really needs a woman." She was saying  
  
Faye walked in, her ankle numb with pain that she was getting used to. "This ship _has _a woman," she said coldly. She turned to Spike who was sitting on the yellow couch, his hair and clothes messed up, his cheek so red it looked like it was pinched with a vengeance. Pink lipstick settled itself on his other cheek, and his mouth was slightly open with annoyance. He wanted to speak but couldn't find his voice. Ed sat behind the stairs, hugging her computer to her chest, her brown-gold eyes staring fearfully at the girl afraid that she would do the same to her.   
  
Faye held back a laugh and turned to the girl who pouted in the corner. "Oh," was all the teen replied.   
  
Faye shrugged trying to lift pain away from her sore ankle. She didn't want to sit down just yet, she didn't want Spike to see how much pain she was in. "Hey if you wanted to join-" Spike cut her off as he stood and tried to straighten his shirt. "You wouldn't be allowed to, because, uh, I already have two beautiful girls working with me," he said laughing with false feeling. Faye could feel her heart beat to the lie that she knew he was just saying to get Ayutora off his back.  
  
The girl pouted even more and all Faye could think was how pathetic she looked. No, she really didn't want a girl like that in their little group so she kept her mouth shut after that. The girl shrugged and smiled again, grabbing fiercely onto Spike's arm. "Well, I do have some information on Jet," she began excitedly.  
  
Spike's face turned from neutral to intense anger as he turned and took the girl by her shoulders. "Ayutora, tell me right this minute!" Spike slammed her up against the wall, he wasn't playing with information he didn't want to bargain with.   
  
"Hey!" She screeched. Her eyes narrowed and she pushed him away forcefully. Faye noticed Spike waver on his feet as he jumped back. The girl had to be strong to do that to a man two feet taller than her. Faye touched Spike's arm as she took out a cigarette.  
  
"Let the girl talk," she said angrily. "God, you barely let any words come from her mouth." Faye could feel his pulse on his wrist. It beat fast, beat with angry determination. Would it ever beat fast for her in the heat of just one touch of passion? She wondered idly.  
  
He stared at her fingers and then her eyes, the life and fire in his depths blowing out with reluctance. Faye was right. "All right, but you have two minute's, Ayutora." He could feel anger rushing to take over his sanity as he waited.   
  
Ayutora rubbed her arm dramatically. Her face countered in a pout once more. Faye wanted to smack the little brat who had to be eighteen or older. "Listen, the Bebop doesn't carry babies like you. I'm sure we could find Jet on our own if we had to, you little brat, so give us the information or we're throwing you out of here," Faye lit up. "Without you damn ship or space suit." Faye was a cold bitch when she said that, she knew she was and she got the satisfaction of seeing fear enter the girl's gaze.   
  
Edward jumped from under the stairs. "Spike person can't go anywhere. Sword Fish's fuel tank is trashed. Faye Faye made Sword Fish useless. Edward need money to order new parts. Edward know Bebop have no money, so Ed get a bounty for Faye Faye and Spike person." Ed held up her computer proudly.   
  
"Hey, I want to co-" Ayutora began.   
  
"NO!," Faye and Spike said simultaneously. Florence Diandre, 25 years old with a criminal background of thefts, smuggling, and murder. Worth: 70000 wong. Faye glanced at the woman with dark green hair and silver eyes. She was really beautiful, Faye noted. She looked over at Spike to see if he thought so too. But his eyes held no emotion only anger as he looked up and stared back her.   
  
"Faye, you just _had_ to run into me!" He said angrily.   
  
"And you just _had_ to be an asshole!" She said back as they straightened. Anger zipped through her system then slowly distinguished. Everything was her fault wasn't it?  
  
Ed smiled and took her computer and put it on top of her head. "Spike person and Faye Faye are going to have a great time!"   
  
"Ed, let me ask you this," Faye began. "What ships are we going to take?" She glanced at Spike and then back at Ed. "I mean I don't want that idiot shoved in my ship, and Red Tail only has room for one."   
  
Ayutora smiled. "Ed told me to come and let you use my ship. Why else would I be here? Well, besides the fact I have info on Jet." The girl smiled sweetly, so sickly innocent was her eyes that Faye wanted to actually throw up. "_My_ ship has two seats.." the angry faces around her told her to shut up.   
  
Spike turned to Ed , murder written all over his face as the child jumped up and down, laughing hysterically. "I told Ed that I didn't like Ayutora," he muttered so that only Faye could hear. Faye suppressed a laugh.   
  
"So where's this bounty at?" Faye asked as she sat down on the couch. Her ankle sighed in relief.  
  
"Pluto!" Ed sat down and looked at Faye.   
  
Spike sighed angrily. "Alright, so I use Ayutora's ship and you use yours."   
  
"You didn't _ask_ to use my ship, Spike," Ayutora said behind him playfully.   
  
His face contracted with annoyance and anger as he stared at Faye. She shook her head telling him not to blow up in the teen's face. He turned and she could almost see the fake smile he was giving the girl with clenched teeth. "Ayutora, _may_ I _use your _ship?" His words were clipped and muffled behind tightly clenched teeth.  
  
"Sure, Spike." She said happily as she ran into the kitchen. "You guys go and I will wait and give you the information when you get back!" She called behind her shoulder.   
  
Spike turned back to Faye and a message passed between them. Something told them Jet's time was running out fast. They needed to hurry. "Why not just use Ayutora's ship and go after Jet?" Faye asked, her voice calm, the crazy-calm that happened before a storm.  
  
"Her ship looks like mine but it lacks fire power. If anything should happen in space I would be useless in battle." He shrugged. "We leave in five minutes. Pack warmly, Pluto is Hell frozen over." He said lightly before he walked out into the highway.   
  
_Yeah, and your heart is Hell frozen over ten more times. Mine is trapped in it's first ice storm that wants to freeze my own hell inside. _  
  
  
_NOTE: Uh yeah lots of mistakes because I am tired and want to go to bed! SORRY!_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  


  
  
  
  



	8. CHAPTER 8

_Disclaimer: CB is not mine.   
NOTE: Ok, for all those who think the story line is going slow. I'M SORRY!!!! I am trying but I think that the relationship between Spike and Faye needs to be in a way rebuilt. Ya know they changed so much, anyway that's why the story line between them is kinda long. Sorry again, I promise to work at the length!! Thanks for all the reviews, they make the difference!!!  
~VT~_  


  


_Chapter 8_  


  
  
"I didn't think you cared, Spike," Faye said looking at the black silk dress on the bed. She looked back up at him with sarcasm on her face. "I wondered why we only had money for only one room, you're splurging our money on clothes and Starlight Orchestra tickets." She sat on the chair, arms folded across her breasts as she stared gently at Spike who was flipping through the TV channels as he lay on the bed next to a brand new tuxedo and dress. The small scene touched her, though she didn't know why or how.  
  
"Faye, you know me, you'd have to kill me to dress up like that. But if it'll help us catch Florence and get us closer to Jet..."  
  
"You'll do anything." She sighed as she stood, her whole body weary, her ankle still sore but her will still refusing to acknowledge it as a weakness. Would he ever do anything for her sake? She slightly limped towards Spike and to the dress he'd bought, trying not to limp too much as to cause his notice. She lifted the plastic bag it was under and stared at it. It was a beautiful black silk with oriental designs in a deep rich gold. It was breath taking.   
  
"Well, at least you have good taste. So where is this Diandre girl going to be?" Her voice sounded so distant, she _felt _so distant, like wind that wasn't blowing anywhere, just standing still in the destruction the world faced everyday. She felt lost to time then, as if she wanted to go away, wanted to leave and never look back. It wasn't just memories of pain anymore, it wasn't just the fact that she was living something so old, so tiring that it didn't seem worth living anymore, it was knowing there was something so close to her reach that made her feel alive, and she couldn't get it no matter how hard she tried.   
  
Suddenly everything in her past up until that moment seemed pointless and she wanted to start over.   
  
She couldn't. She had chosen her path and she knew she had to walk it.   
  
Spike smiled at her, his face gentle, and for a second she just wanted to fall down next to him and pull his arms around her. "I don't have any taste at all. I just asked what the latest fashion was and I bought it." He sat up on his elbow and looked at her. "You like it? I tried to find the least sluttiest thing at the store," he said sarcastically. "Anyway, this Diandre is going to be at the Starlight Orchestra tonight."  
  
She stared at him hard, and slapped him on the shoulder. "Whatever, Spike." She walked over to the window and stared out at the snow covered streets, faintly hearing the memory of Gren's song on the saxophone. It had snowed when she had been with him, and the thought of him weakened her soul. He had nothing to live for except for revenge on Vicious. When that failed he died believing in nothing but going home.  
  
She didn't have anything to live for. Was she going to die believing in nothing?   
  
She had Spike, but Spike wasn't really there. He was just something she dreamed up long ago and was just realizing that the dream wasn't just a dream, but something just as remote all the same. She knew that all her dreams were just things that flew away as fast as they could go from her reach. So she had stopped dreaming and started faking what she didn't have.   
  
"Do they have a gym here? A workout area?" She asked as she turned away from the window.   
  
Spike looked at her sideways. "Second floor. Why?" He asked. He never remembered her working out before.   
  
She opened her bag and took out a pair of sweats and white tank top. "I need to work out some stress." She walked into the bathroom and came out in a few minutes, hair tied up, and sneakers securely tied. Her ankle protested to the pressure but she was beyond ignoring it.   
  
Spike nodded and went back to watching TV as she walked out the door and made her way down the hallway. The air in the hotel was cold despite the heating system, hell Pluto was a cold planet, the coldest one in fact. She rubbed her shoulders and arms with her hands as she got on the elevator and hit floor two.   
  
She rested her head against the wall of the elevator as it began to move, her eyes closing, her body relaxing as the enclosure comforted her, caressed her and made her want to fall asleep. She sighed. She shouldn't be tired, the whole way to Pluto she had slept, reveled in the dreams that took her away from living.   
  
The dreams had turned to nightmares before long though and then she had woken up, ten minutes from landing.   
  
The bell rang and the elevator stopped as the doors opened. The gym blasted loud music as two men pumped on the weights, the rest of the room empty but full of equipment. She stepped out and made her way to the punching bag. She needed to hurt something, work her frustration out.   
  
She let her body feel the rhythm of the music as she started her assault on the worn leather. She punched with her left arm. _The past needs to disappear. _She punched with her right arm. _Feelings need to leave me the fuck alone. _She kicked with her right foot. _Spike needs to get the hell out of my mind. _She punched with her right again. _I need to stop worrying. _She kicked with her right again. _And whoever has Jet needs to be ready for the biggest fight of their lives. I'm going to kick their ass! _She kicked with her left foot and pain ricocheted off her ankle through whole body as she gasped for the breath that was stolen from her.   
  
"Uh, ow," she hissed. She saw black spots as she fell to the ground the blue mat hugging her body as she landed. _Damn..._  
  
The two men were there in an instant. "You alright, babe?" A guy with blue hair asked as he stared down at her, his toothless gap stared down at her with concern.   
  
The other man was a big as hell, and he was bald to go with the good looks he didn't have. "Yeah, Miss, are you Ok?" His voice sounded dumb as hell too. Music blared through the room and they had to shout for her to hear them.  
  
She jumped up, almost falling down again from the shot of pain coming from her left leg. _You stop that now, _she scolded her foot. She didn't need two ugly as hell men asking if she needed help, she didn't need _anyone_ asking if she needed help. "I'm fine," she said shortly, angrily, and ignorantly. Her _life_ didn't need help, _she_ didn't need help.   
  
Who was she trying to fool?  
  
The two men didn't like her tone. "Hey, babe, no need to be rude." The blue haired said angrily.   
  
"No need to call me 'babe' either." Her voice was pretty damn cold as she went back to punching the bag. Her life was starting to get pretty damn cold again. Her anger and her frustration hit their mark on the black leather just before she was grabbed from behind by her shirt and slammed into the wall. She could feel blood drip down her lip as she cried out in surprise. _What the fuck...?_  
  
The big man had her, the bald one, and his grip held her hair and her shirt painfully as he turned her to face the blue haired man. The skinny man looked at her with rage, obviously not used to being dissed. "I'll call whoever I want 'babe'." He smacked her hard across the face as she struggled, pain ripping through her face as the blow knocked at her unconsciousness. The grip in her purple mane tightened and she bit into her lower lip, her eyes radiating anger.   
  
"That fuckin' hurts," she said referring to the roots ripping from her scalp. Her clenched teeth were bright with blood, and tears sprung to her eyes. Rage filled her soul, anger that she was allowing herself to be beat up by two rednecks. Vicious had been a helluv alot stronger, had been a helluv alot worse...  
  
The blue haired man smiled. "Good, it's supposed to hurt. Just like this is," he said as he slapped her hard in the opposite direction. He was enjoying this all too much, she thought bitterly.  
  
"Got to hell," she spat.   
  
She was hit again.  
  
Blood was rich in her mouth and she coughed at it trying to clear it away from her throat. She reached in her pants and slowly gripped her knife hidden there in her thigh strap. The blue haired man was going on and on about how he didn't like rejection and how she was being a bitch, and how he was going to teach her a lesson.   
  
He was the one who was going to be taught a lesson.  
  
She let the knife fly behind her, hate radiating off the blade with red sincerity. The grip in her hair loosened as the man cried out in surprise and pain. She struggled hard and got free, landing hard on her feet. She punched the man with the blue hair hard ignoring her foot as it screamed pain through her and made a break for the elevator. She couldn't take two men, one ten times bigger than she, without any weapons. It wasn't possible. Anger pulsed through her veins right next to the fear that pushed her to panic.   
  
She hit the button, turning and getting ready for the next attack. She knew she was going to have to fight before the damn elevator came to deliver her from evil. _Stairs? _The blue haired man was already coming for her and he slammed into her hard as he squashed her up against the elevator doors. _Too late_.  
  
"You, bitch!" he yelled as he hit her hard up against the doors again. Her body screamed out in pain, protesting the rough abuse.  
  
"Asshole," she hissed back through broken bones, and bruised skin.  
  
She could feel the breath leaving her but she wasn't going down that easily, no fucking way. She kneed him in between the legs, and pretty damn hard too. He let go of her, but the bulky man was on his way, blood pouring from a wound in his shoulder. He punched her hard and she went flying. She landed hard against the nearest wall and felt her ribs crack and her head throb. Her whole body feeling as if it was being attacked by a million different bees, inside and out.  
  
Fear was prickling at her from every direction as she struggled to get up, to stand and face whatever was coming to her, but her ankle, the weariness, the pain, it was all too much and before she knew it the blue haired man was on top of her, slapping her face side from side, laughing and cursing like a mix between God and the Devil. He had her knife as he stabbed her twice in the side, three times in the shoulder, and once in the arm. He got the satisfaction of hearing her scream and cry. She could feel the tears mixing with her useless efforts.  
  
Did she deserve this?  
  
She could feel her vision failing the pain entering her body like a forgotten visitor, and then she was fighting back, her eyes wild with determination as she fought. She wasn't going to be beaten by another of life's unfair battles, no! She was panicking and the adrenaline that pulsed through her body was like a fiery halo of insanity. Fuck the world for doing this to her! She was screaming, crying, pleading. Did she hear herself repeatedly call for Spike?  
  
The blue haired man laughed at her attempts as he told her he liked his women fighting as he ripped at her shirt with her own knife. No, No, her mind screamed unable to comprehend what was happening.   
  
She fought harder.   
  
He stabbed her hard in the shoulder, the blade hitting the matt below her as she screamed.   
  
"Spike!"  
  
He was kissing her while his hand explored the inside of her shirt the other holding her hands above her head. Her mind couldn't comprehend that it was all happening like this, that everything she'd worked for was being put to shame, being tossed out the window. No, this wasn't happening, it was all a nightmare. Every movement she made caused her pain. Her attempts failed and she couldn't give up. Her heart sunk with the knowledge that no matter what she was doing she couldn't stop what was happening. She couldn't stop what she knew, had she been physicly able, to prevent. She felt hopelessness fill her from head to foot as she cursed through tears.   
  
And then the blue haired man was flung off her to the far corner of the room, a woman shooting his sorry ass with a beautiful golden gun. Faye could barely see, could barely move as she lay sprawled on the floor, her hair covering the left side of her face. She should have been thankful but all she could do was sob and breathe Spike's name.  
  
The bulky man ran after the woman, his body shaking with anger, but she shot only once, hitting in the head, watching with a smile as his head exploded and tissue flew everywhere. She walked over to the blue haired man who was staring at her wide eyed, fear shaking his whole body as he clutched his side, blood seeping through his fingers.   
  
The woman wasted no time as she shoved the end of the gun in his mouth and fired.   
  
Then it was over and the woman was standing over Faye, pity and concern written across her familiar beauty. Her green hair was straight and the ends had a hint of pink, her gray eyes so wonderfully warm as she picked Faye up and carried her to the elevator. Faye closed her eyes wanting to disappear from the pain, the hate, the shame, everything that was killing her inside.  
  
Everything had happened so fast. All she had wanted was to escape everything that happened in the past and present that gave her more to hurt about, more to cry about, more to make her want to die and get life over with.  
  
_Florence Diandre..._  
  
Then she felt another pair of arms grab her firmly, holding her tightly with protectiveness and Faye opened her eyes to see Spike's face filled with concern and anger as he talked with Diandre. Spike gently took hold of the knife in her shoulder and pulled.   
  
Pain ripped through pain, red clashed with red, and death lingered against life. She could hear herself scream weakly but her voice was so distant, not really there. Oh God she didn't want to die, she was scared. And yet a small sense of peace was filling her, making her warm and comforted.   
  
She moved to cover what her ripped shirt revealed and her movement caused Spike to look down, his face so soft, so thankful that she was alive as he pressed his fingers over the open wound on her shoulder. The small pressure killed her, caused her to wince as her blood flowed out of her. She breathed his name painfully, begging him to help her in a way that was so desperate, so urgent tears streaked her face and filled his. There was nothing embarrassed in his eyes as Florence covered her shaking body with her own coat as Spike carried Faye and followed Diandre down the hallway.   
  
Then, thankfully, all Faye knew was blackness.   
_  
_

NOTE: Who is Diandre. Friend, ally? tell me what you think! I know who she is but who do you think she is?  
~VT~  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	9. CHAPTER 9

_Disclaimer: As ya all know CB is not mine.   
NOTE: Yeah, uh well. This chapter is kind of freaky. I have an idea but I have no idea how I am going to put it in words and I'm so damn tired. But thanks everyone for your reviews, they mean alllllloooottttt to me. LOL. Oh well, enjoy this, and I'll get the next chapter up soooooonn!!!  
  
Chapter 9  
_

  
_Peace. No more hope. Are you happy your pride has been knocked down to it's knees? This is what you wanted, to not feel anything, not understand, just live in silence forever. Are you satisfied that you have found death at last?   
  
She opened her eyes. She floated in space, breathing was hard and coldness etched at her skin. The coldness wanted her but she no longer wanted to receive it. The stars stared at her with cold silver reluctance, as if welcoming a stranger in thier embrace. _No, I am not satisfied.   
  
_She closed her eyes again the coldness was getting to her and she didn't like it. Then the voice came, her voice and her attitude, her sound that wasn't her at all. "What do you want, Faye? Have you found what you want yet?"   
  
_Yes. _She fought to keep her eyes closed, scared that if she opened them something would be there waiting for her, waiting to take her into death. Fear fountained from the truth that she really didn't want to say good-bye yet. She wanted to keep living to feel the only good feeling she felt in a long time. Her love for Spike.  
  
"What do you want, Faye?" The voice caressed her, warmed her through the cold that sought to erase her from existence.  
  
_What do you want? _She replied question for question.   
  
"I have told you what I want. I want to live, I want to love, to be loved." The voice was sad, painless but hurting. It hinted reluctance, urgency, despair. "What do you want, Faye?"   
  
_Stop asking me that! Stop asking me everything! _She cried. Why did she sound so depseperate to erase what made her want to cry with happiness? _I know what I want but I can't have it!_ And that was why she was desperate to hold on to a life that was throwing her away with thoughtlessness. She couldn't have what she wanted and it was more than welcomed to ablige her with patronizing fate. Faye could feel tears sting her eyes with realization and horase depression. And the same old answer brought back, the same old pain that the voice had to have understood if it was she who spoke. Why answer herself if she already knew the answer?  
  
"Faye,..."  
  
She could feel the sobs coming, the utter loneliness she felt when she thought of what she wanted. _I want Spike. I want him to love me. I want to have a life that involves no walking away, no turning away, no dying. I want a life I can't have because I've lived too much to believe in innocent dreams. I want to forget all that makes my own dreams impossible. _Aren't you happy she wanted to shout to the cold nothingness around her. Are you satisfied by my suffereing? _  
  
_And then she saw Spike's sarcastic smile, his beautiful multicolor eyes, his green hair, his lanky form. It all looked so much more promising than death and it hurt to think that she would part from the beauty and love he gave to her when she dreamed. But all the same she accepted death around the last instant, knowing it was inevitable. Then she wasn't suffering only longing and desiring the temptation that would never be fulfilled.  
  
She had a chose in the midst of that coldness. Choose life or death. Live or to die. To be chained or be forever free.   
  
In that moment she chose Spike over Death and Death chose damnination over survival._  
  
_There was silence. She could feel the anger, the mixed feelings that were quickly turning to rage hit her hard as she opened her eyes angrily. She wasn't dying without a fight, and Death wasn't going to win because Life played it's best hand of misery. She was going to beat the odds she couldn't beat before, and she was going to laugh at everything that had held her down on the pedestal of victory.   
  
It was time for round two.   
  
_

~*~*~*~*~*~*~  


  
He saw her open her eyes and all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and show how much he was worried for her, how scared he had been that he had lost her. All he wanted to do was scold himself for feeling so much for her. It felt wrong in a way to feel so right.  
  
She looked through sleepy and painfilled eyes, her body feeling as if it went through a shredder in Hell and back. She saw him as if a dream and she tried to sit up and prove she wasn't a weak woman who just got her ass kicked by two lousy men. Pain entered her from all sides and she cried out as she fell back to the pillow beneath her. _Damn.   
  
_She was in a bed, it was cozy, so comfortable and she wished that all the comfort would enter her body and soothe her wounds. Soft blankets enfolded her body and the shades were closed in the small hotel room lit by a small lamp in the corner, smaller than hers and Spike's had been.   
  
"Faye, you shouldn't try to move," he was saying softly.   
  
"Am I going to die?" She asked her voice cracked, her throat parched. Her whole body _felt_ like she was dying.  
  
He smiled sadly. "No." He was lying wasn't he? But she refused to accept he was lying to her about something so important.  
  
She began to cry, did she really think she was going to die? Spike wouldn't let her die, he wouldn't let Death catch her, would he? She smiled through her tears as he touched one that fell down her cheek and brushed it away with his finger. His touch was so soft it made her shiver. He was on his knees beside her and was smiling sadly, thankful she was alive.   
  
"Spike." She managed through sobs. She felt so comforted by the fact he was the last thing she saw when she blacked out and the first thing she saw when she awoke. It was all like a nightmare that had a happy ending and yet the ending hadn't played itself out yet, and she waited for another monster show it's ugly face, take what she finally found and throw it away like it was nothing. All good things came to an end eventually and she was scared that the moment she found herself in was one of those things.   
  
"Don't try to talk, Faye," he said as he took her hand in his and held it tightly. He was touching her and so caring, so lovingly, so sure of what his feelings were and yet so unconscious of them. His eyes were so deep, so dreamlike, so important to her heart that it made it hurt.   
  
"I love you, Spike." She had wanted to say those words ever since he ran away to die six months ago. She had wanted to reach out to him even then and she hadn't known it. She had wanted him to be there for her and protect her from the world that hated her. She wanted him to guard her from the people that wounded her based on the fact that even if he protested he would. And then he turned out to be the same, another person who wounded her and played life's game on the roll of the dice.   
  
But it didn't matter what happened in the past because what was happening in her heart in the present meant more than anything to her, meant so much more than life itself, than death, than the emptiness she sought to achieve in six long months.   
  
"Faye, you're a little drugged up. You don't mean that." He looked deep into her eyes and what she saw in them was what burned in her soul.   
  
She laughed bitterly. "No, no maybe I don't. You wouldn't believe me even if I did," she said softly. She coughed, her chest erupting in pain as she raised her hand to cover her mouth. Her broken bones protested to her movement as blood produced itself on her hand, on her lips, and tongue. She stared at the blood as if it held answers, as if everything was written in it's crimson death. She shivered. She'd seen so much blood in her life and none ever brought her so close to death.   
  
"Faye,.." Spike stared at her, telling her with his eyes, pleading her to stop rambling because he was loosing his own control, he was loosing his hold on his own feelings. He moved closer.   
  
"Spike, I don't want to die. You don't understand, I don't want to go because I know I will never see you again." She smiled sadly. "I love you, Spike. I don't know why or how, but it happened." She could feel scolding tears run down her face. Maybe she was pumped with drugs but the words sounded so right, so worth every ounce of strength the rest of her life amounted to. She may have been out of herself but her feelings were still the same, her love more open.  
  
He touched her face and stared at her intently. Searching, reading her features for the truth, for the meaning of what she was saying."Faye, please, stop talking. You're pushing yourself." He moved his face closer to hers and stared into her eyes. "Diandre is coming back with something to help you. But you have to stop pushing yourself."   
  
"Damnitt!" She cried as she tried to sit up. Pain thrashed her body but she didn't care. Black spots played over her vision as she tried to move, swing her fists at him in momentary anger. In an instant Spike was on top of her, pinning her arms lightly to the bed at her side as he sat above her his knees on either side of her hips on the bed as he supported his weight on them and not on her stomach.   
  
"Faye, stop it!" He shouted at her as she continued to fight, Her wounds reopened and her blood soaked the sheets more than before. "Faye!"   
  
"Stop telling me that the drugs are doing this to me, Spike Spiegel!" She cried. Tears scalded her face, her cheeks. "Don't patronize me!" The pain ripped through her as she sobbed for him to understand.   
  
"Faye, please!" He stared deep into her eyes pleading with a command so deep it hurt her to see those feelings in his eyes.   
  
She stopped struggling and broke down into misery. "Spike, I love you. Don't make me say it again. Say something back to me, do you love me back or do you think I'm crazy?" She stared up at him, her tears blurring his figure making him more abstract, making him seem more far away. She felt the ache of having him disappear again from her life and her soul ripped apart. _Don't leave me again. I won't be able to take it...  
  
_He stared down into her eyes and all he saw was pain, sorrow, urgency, despair and his soul hurt to see all that as she looked up at him, tears rolling down her bruised cheeks. Even with all those bruises and cuts she was beautiful, she was even more so because the feeling in her words, the emotions in her face, made her that way. For once Spike was seeing the real Faye underneath all the bitchiness, the coldness, the smartassness, and the emptiness.   
  
He liked everything he saw. The ache inside him was so strong, so complete as he bent his head and loosened his grip on her wrists as his lips met her softly.   
  
And then everything fit together. All questions answered, the magic was set, and everything was perfect. His lips were so soft as if to reprove for all the harshness in her wounds. She was so surprised that she gasped against his kiss that made her feel like flying and falling at the same time. Then she was kissing him back and her arms encircled his neck with happiness she never remembered feeling before.   
  
There was magic everywhere, her body seemed to vibrate in the feeling. Her finger tips tingled as she ran them through his soft hair, as his own entangled themselves in the ends of her own dark purple locks. Then his lips were searching harder, looking for something they couldn't find as he struggled against her passion and love.   
  
Then he was leaning too hard on her stomach and she was crying out against his lips. Immediately he pulled away and stared down at her in astonishment. What the hell did he just do?   
  
"Faye, I-" he began as he slipped out of her embrace, angry at himself, angry at his heart. He moved off the bed and stood beside her.   
  
Then she was smiling as blood dripped over her lips, in her mouth. He had pressed the blood to rise in her again when he put pressure on her stomach and she felt like she was drowning in it. "Thank you, Spike." She wanted to tell him more but her words were being choked out of her. She was content, she was satisfied, she felt complete and she could die in peace. He loved her and everything seemed right, even her death, just by knowing that.   
  
She closed her eyes.  
  
She couldn't breathe as she gasped, and Spike was shaking her, begging her to hold on. Telling her to come back to him, to not give up, that Diandre was there and setting up the machine.   
  
She saw Diandre stand over her and smile, saying something about how things were going to be fine. Telling her to hold on just a little longer.   
  
Her blood was choking her as she made an attempt to cough, to breathe. Neither worked. _I can't hold on I'm sorry, Spike. _  
  
Then she felt a lightening shock and everything went black once more.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


Diandre could feel the electrical current flow through Faye as she attached the two probes to the woman's forehead. The woman choked out a cry, and then Diandre was touching Faye's chest with her hands, her whole body lighting on fire with the electricity that flowed through Faye to her. Then she concentrated on making Faye whole, alive, healthy, and unmarred again. She pictured in her mind how the young woman must have looked and focused innerly on that image. Diandre could feel imaginary blood choke her while she still breathed, she could feel the various wounds though none marked her body. She could feel the wind run past her and Faye, death passing them by. Time, dreams, faces that meant nothing to Diandre but something to Faye warped her image and then it was all over and Diandre was there standing over Faye, who was staring at her with aqua eyes of disorientation.   
  
No scars marked Faye's body and Diandre smiled as she sat back. She was so weak after that expression of will but she knew she had saved Faye and that was all that mattered.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


Ed looked at the computer screen, typing furiously as she worked. Ayutora came around the corner and fed Ed some appetizing food with a small smile. "You work alot for a kid," she said as she sat down on the yellow couch.   
  
"Edward, wants to find Jet." Edward didn't even look up from her work as she typed.   
  
"Yeah, I think we all do," Ayutora said.   
  
Just then the ship was hit hard and both girls went flying to the floor in the vibration.   
  
"What the hell?" Ayutora shouted, her red mass of hair over her eyes.   
  
Edward typed a few keys and the yelled out in an animal like voice. "Bebop Bebop is under attack!"   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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NOTE: Bad huh? I know. But ya know this was so spur of the moment. Sorry about the mistakes!!!  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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	10. CHAPTER 10

_Disclaimer: CB isn't mine, obviously.   
NOTE: Love all the reviews. I am so thankful for them because my life is in a real ditch right now and they are one of the few things that brings a smile to my face. That and the support of my friends. Thank for reading, thank you for making me feel like part of my life is somewhat important even if it is only on the Internet.   
Sincerely, VT Lia   
  
Chapter ten  
  
_

She was alive.   
  
Did it matter? She didn't really care to be there in time, in the midst of something painful and comforting at the same time. Was she destined to die again, see the brinks of an after life she both feared and wanted in some strange way? She didn't think she could take another sensation of falling and flying away from the life that had imprisoned her by numerous ropes and chains   
  
Yet she was alive, maybe not against her will but against some part of her that wanted more than anything just to pass life by, forget all that happened in it's depths to make it devalued in a way. She had been in life for more years than normal humans because of her cryogenic sleep. Where would she be if that had never happened? In the ground and rotting away by worms and decay?  
  
_You wouldn't be here, loving Spike as much as you do.   
  
_She loved him so much it hurt and killed her to love so deeply if only for a little while because good things never lasted forever. He was there, he was the only thing in reach that took away her pain, that understood, and maybe those were the only reasons she loved him. He was just there and she was next to him wanting nothing more to love and be loved.   
  
They were such cold reasons, such impossibly heartless reasons and what did it matter if she was alive? She carried the weight of her feelings again with heavier realization, heavier understanding that death might have been better after all even in the small time it took her to be barely thankful for breathing again. And she was alive because of the bounty she was sent after. How ironic that she be saved by the person she wanted to imprison. But exactly _how_ she had been saved..., now that was the mystery she couldn't fathom.  
  
"What happened?" Her body tingled with faded electricity as she stared into silver eyes of coldness.   
  
The woman smiled. "I stole you from the hands of death." Her voice was so calm, so easy that Faye could barely keep her mind on track of the important things. The voice was persuasive, impassive and yet demanding.   
  
"How?" Spike was next to her, staring at her with fear, a certain uncertainty that stole maturity from his eyes as he sat in astonishment.   
  
The woman smiled, sat down on the chair and crossed her long legs. She was beautiful, Faye could see exotic danger surround her beauty that was more intense in person than in picture. No human carried that kind of beauty...  
  
"What are you?" Faye whispered before she could think about the words that came out of her mouth.   
  
"I am neither life nor death for I was neither born nor conceived. I became into being because I was wished to, not out of love or lust. I just am." She was full of enigmatic answers as her eyes remained expressionless, remained artificially empty.   
  
"That isn't an answer," Spike said as he sat back, his composure gained, his eyes level and expressionless. "It's too many damn words on words made to sound like an answer."   
  
The woman smiled. "Maybe so, but it is true and it is an answer more or less. I am an android, to put in plain words." And how coldly she said android, as if it were meant for someone else and not herself.   
  
Spike and Diandre continued talking but Faye couldn't hear them. She felt peculiar, felt dazed in a way that blocked out everything besides the sensation she was feeling. She drifted and swam in her feelings as they crashed down through her, around her, in her, trying to find homes in her soul and heart. Where were they coming from? Why did they seek her now? She fell back on the bed and groaned as her stomach became sick.   
  
There was nothing that could explain how she felt then. She saw images, she felt memories, felt feelings, felt tears and laughter all at once. She wanted to scream, to yell, to curse, she wanted to run, and walk, and lie down. And everything ripped at her, wanted her in imagination of a surreal nightmare that was fusing her once again with life. _This is life, this is how it is, do not forget it until you take your last breath. This is hell, and this is heaven, this is night, and this is day, you are one, and you are the past, future, and present. Who are you, Faye Valentine? Why didn't you die?   
  
_A voice filled her head, stronger than the others and repeated the question, who are you, Faye Valentine, over and over again as she cried and screamed with images she could barely see in her mind, and body. She knew they were there, she knew they were real, and she knew it was all a dream and illusion. Reality and fantasy were drawn so close together there was no border in which to tell them apart.   
  
She didn't know why she didn't die, she didn't know who she was, all she knew was that she was torn between two worlds, life and death. All she could see were flashes of her past, of herself fighting against an invisible enemy, an invisible foe that sought self-destruction.  
  
She fought her own face, her own soul, her own determination to out run who she was, who she had been, and who she was becoming.   
  
Then she was alive and real, and totally aware of the strong arms that held her tightly. He pressed his lips to her hair and told her to be quiet, to stop screaming and yelling. He was there, he was going to protect if only she let him in to do so.   
  
She was incredibly quiet then. She understood in a way that couldn't be comprehended and she pushed roughly from his embrace. She didn't just _want_ to change any more, she _had_ changed. Something inside her altered, reeled from feeling that wasn't hard to do anymore. And yet she was impossibly the same, the same old Faye that wanted nothing more than have things the way they were before.   
  
She stared at her hands that seemed different, not real anymore. "This is the after effect of what you did to me, Diandre, isn't it?" She asked her voice risking knowledge and wisdom beyond time. Why did she feel so old all of a sudden? Was it the sudden realization and views of memories that held prism glares of feelings and experiences?   
  
"The side effects are a sudden realization of what life means to the person. Why does life mean to you, Faye?" She spoke as if Spike wasn't even there looking at Faye intently, sternly, coldly. His love had been refused and hurt was replaced by anger in his deep set eyes.  
  
She felt an ache in her heart but she refused to recognize it. She had changed and she wasn't sure if it was for better or worse yet. "Life means nothing. I have lived, I have died. I have fulfilled the cycle of time and destiny and now I stand and I feel nothing." She said her words slow as if they held a certain meaning when they were just words to her. She looked up into Diandre's eyes. "But I don't like this feeling. I'd rather be unsure of everything than be so certain it's not worth life anymore." And it was true. She didn't like to know that life was almost the same as death just on the opposite sides. She didn't like to think that death was just another birth of life in a new world or maybe a new dimension. She didn't like that she could think of colder reasons for loving Spike and all he was.   
  
She turned to him, she wanted to cry but crying had been lost to both time and eternity that had called her soul and grabbed for her as she chose life over their power. He was why she lived. Should she hate him or love him? She couldn't hate him for giving his gift unintentionally.   
  
"Spike," she said softly. He stared at her evenly cold, his stare penetrating as he searched for the Faye that had needed him, that had been the better part of his life even when he hadn't realized it. He found nothing and soon gave up.   
  
She looked at Diandre again and smiled. "Can we be alone?" She tried to bring feeling into the emotion but nothingness entered her stare as Diandre returned her gaze equally. She bowed slightly and turned to Spike.   
  
"Feeling can only be born into feeling. Know this, she has been reborn, been given a chance at life that would have otherwise been impossible. She is being reborn into life as who she is inside. She is like the caterpillar and the butterfly who sleeps and comes alive with new beauty of just what was already there.  
  
"She has forgotten feeling, though it beckons for her to remember with images, with thoughts, and notions. You are the only one who can remake everything she has lost to death and time." Then Diandre left the two staring with wonder of what her words meant.   
  
_Is that why I am so disconnected, so confused about everything now? Must I have to learn to feel and hurt again? Do I even want that? _Faye looked at Spike. She wanted to love him, she wanted to feel that range of emotions he made her feel when he kissed her, but now all the cold thoughts, all the endless screams and revelations made her so empty, so destroyed and defeated. Could he make her feel again?   
  
She longed to find out.   
  
"I don't know you anymore, Faye. Your eyes are cold now, cold and empty. When we first met a few days ago I thought I would never see that look on your face no matter how much you wanted it." He smiled ironically and took out a cigarette as she stared at him, the blood stained sheets sticking to her body with dried liquid. "Damn, Faye, you sure can make my life a living hell."   
  
"And it has been all about your life, hasn't it?" Faye asked, looking at him with dagger eyes. Ones that wanted to cut through him.   
  
"It's all been about Faye's life as well," he replied coldly.   
  
"I didn't go off to die and leave selfishly. I didn't leave behind my friends to fight a battle in which I expected to loose my life." She turned away from him swiftly. She couldn't look at him because he fused with images of an ugly past that consumed her with a collage of places and words that spoke through her mind.   
_  
"When angels fall from heaven they become devils." _She could see Vicious' face clearly. His eyes so empty so hateful as he glared at Spike through the mists of stained glass windows..._  
  
_"_You're scared to be abandoned by them so you abandon the first." _Gren's voice was so soft, so sad as he talked in his apartment room, staring at her so softly, so understandingly...  
  
_"Look at my eyes, Faye. One's fake because I lost it in an accident. Ever since then I've being seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. I felt like I was watching a dream I'd never really wake up from..."   
  
_She looked down at her hands again, noticing the for the first time the traces of blood that streaked them. "Did you ever wake up from you dream, Spike? Or are you still dreaming? Am I just part of your dream?" She stared up at him, her eyes pleading, not knowing what they wanted but searching all the same.   
  
He stared at her through cold eyes. "Why the hell bring that up now?" He asked as he breathed out a fog of smoke.   
  
She turned away and got up from the bed, taking the sheet with her, noticing her shirt was still torn and open as she wrapped the white folds around her. "I don't know." She opened the blinds and stared out at the blue night, the snow so beautiful as it covered the streets. The planet was so lonely...  
  
"Jet needs us," she said as she brushed a hand through her hair. She was covered in blood, she could feel it, taste it.   
  
"I need you." His voice was so soft and hard at the same time.   
  
She pressed her head to the window and sighed. She wanted to feel again, she wanted to love again. She wanted Spike to make everything better...  
  
Then she felt him behind her and soon his fingers were touching her arm and slowly turning her around. She looked down and then slowly lifted her eyes to meet his. _Please, _her eyes pleaded, _give me back the life I lost when you left. You took it all away and you're the only one who can bring it all back.   
  
_"The after effect of whatever the hell she did to you, it makes you who you really are on the inside. What you've always been. Who are you, Faye? Do you even know that yet?" He tucked his fingers under her chin to remain staring into her eyes as he searched her face.   
  
_Who are you, Faye Valentine? _The voice echoed in her head. She couldn't answer, she couldn't reply. She felt surging emotions, felt them start to rise to spread through her body like a plague.   
  
"I don't know who you are anymore, Faye. I don't have a damn clue who I look at when I look in your eyes." He drew closer as his eyes became her universe, dark silent pools she wanted to dive into and die in. "I thought I knew when I looked in your eyes before, when I kissed you and tried to findt he truth in it.  
  
"I've awaken from my dream, only to find another dreamer too late." He was soft as he said this, brushing his lips against hers softly. "Faye, don't be the dreamer I was. Because dreams end." His lips were against hers, so agonizingly bordering on a kiss. "I don't know, Faye. I love part of you that was never there at the Bebop. The pained hurt lost girl that has matured so greatly in half a year."   
  
"You loved me when I was pitiful?" she asked bitterly. She tried to pull away but his grasp on her shouldered tightened.   
  
"No, I love you because you have become strong in spite of that pity." Then he kissed her, hard, urgent searching for all that she was, bringing her to the brinks of a death that neither cared nor ignored the probably that she might still be it's.   
  
"Spike," she said against his kiss. And then the emotions let go in her heart and she was drowning in them as she kissed back. Her heart tingled her soul tingled, her whole being tingled as she held him tightly. She was home, she was safe, and she was protected in his arms and in his wake. She loved him, completely fully, and selflessly.   
  
The sheet had fallen to the floor and his hands caressed her back as the torn shirt fell away. And the passion that surged through them wasn't lust, it wasn't sexual desire it was a search and reassurance that they were real, that they truly found everything they ever wanted in a life without dreams.   
  
She grabbed at his shirt, longing to feel him against her, knowing he was truly there, holding her, wanting her. And he was slow as he arched her back to the bed. "Spike, please don't be a dream." Her voice was so soft and urgent as she cried for him. Tears fell down her cheeks and he kissed them away.   
  
He kissed her harder as he bore down on her and removed the rest of her clothing. "I love you," he said softly as he touched her cheek and stared down into her eyes. "Dream or not, I love you."   
  
Then she reached for him and pulled him down, smiling through pain as it slowly washed away. He would love her for that night, but in the morning would she be the same? Would she be the woman he loved or the woman he hated?  
  
Faye felt in the heat of their passion the instant fear they might never have another moment like this and she clung to him tighter. She wanted to hold him forever and never let him go. And then she was falling to sleep, to nightmares that haunted her with one question.   
  
_Who are you, Faye Valentine?_  
  
  
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NOTE: Ok this is how it is. I wrote it but didn't review over it yet. But I don't have time so I'll do it later.   
VT  
_


	11. CHAPTER 11

_Disclaimer: CB isn't mine.   
NOTE: Sorry about the chapter eight thingie. It's fixed now!!! Oh and Moonlight sorry but I changed my mind again, you won't have to read the first part, nothin changed in it!!VT _  
_  
Chapter 11_  


  
She was sleeping next him contentedly, more calm than she had ever been in the last few days. He stared at her face, felt the guilt and rolled off the bed, gathering his jeans as he slipped them on slowly, trying to relive the last moments with her in his arms.   
  
He couldn't tell if he loved her or needed her more. Need was far different from love, need was selfish and love wasn't. He knew it couldn't be both. He could feel her, taste her, smell her in his mind, heart and soul. He loved or needed her, completely, fully, and childishly.   
  
Women couldn't be trusted.   
  
And yet he himself couldn't be trusted either. He stared down at Faye with eyes of contempt, love, and guilt. Neither emotion rocketing over the other. He loved her, he hated her, and he couldn't tell which was stronger. He couldn't tell once again if the love was really there more than the need for her was there. But did it matter which feeling out of the three was stronger as long as they all came from the heart?   
  
He didn't know but he sure as hell cared.   
  
He put on his shirt soaked with her blood. Staring at it through the mirror he threw it off, feeling more guilt than before as he turned and walked out the door.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~  


  
Diandre threw the bodies over in the corner as she began cleaning up all the blood and tissue she found on the floor. She was covered in blood from head to foot, none of it her own. The feeling and smell neither bothered nor gave her any heed of sickness. She was an android, born without feelings, without a heart. She didn't care about that either but some part of her was flawed by compassion that was neither cold nor warm and whether or not it was a glitch or purposeful attire she didn't really care.   
  
The gym music had been changed to a sweet melodramatic tune that she herself had recorded during her first years living free without scientists probing her and 'perfecting' her as they liked to call it. It was sad, haunting and she loved it.   
  
"Clean up duty is the worst part of killing," a voice said behind her lightly. Spike stepped into the room, his hands in his pockets as he walked up beside her and stared at the mess she had over her hands with an ironic smile. "I figured you'd be here. I mean had to try to get into an androids mind, but hell anyone wouldn't be stupid enough to leave two dead bodies in the gym for people to find and police to investigate." He smiled with his calm passive way and stared at her.  
  
Diandre didn't respond as she swept the mess into a bag and began scrubbing with a brush. "I'll give you 20,000 wong to not hand me in for the bounty."   
  
"What makes you think I'm here for that?" He pressed his back against the wall.   
  
"20,000, no more or less. Take or leave it but if you refuse I will kill you and myself to keep from getting caught." She didn't look up at him, her voice wasn't pleading, it was fact and he knew it. Death was better than a life where you were being held behind glass and charged at point with probes and needles. She didn't fear death anyway, life was something she never had, it was just something she bordered on touching.  
  
He lit a cigarette. "Fine." It was more than enough to pay for his ship repairs. All he needed was to patch a hole in his fuel tank.   
  
They were silent for a while as they listened to the music. "What the hell did you do to Faye?" He threw the cigarette down into a puddle of blood that hadn't completely dried yet.   
  
"I was made for that, was made to heal wounds with that machine and the cells processed in my body." Diandre shrugged ambiguously. "I know that is my purpose so I don't ask questions. I don't need to." She didn't feel, she didn't need to because feeling was just part of understanding and she already understood too much.   
  
Too much about him and his own purposes.   
  
"Must be pretty damn nice to know why you're here in this world." He said as he walked over to the door and peering out.   
  
She stopped scrubbing and turned to him, turned to look into his eyes. "Don't." She said it simply and purposefully.   
  
"Don't what?" He asked as he turned around. A secret message filled the air, passed between them and his eyes narrowed.   
  
"You don't understand." He said finally through the silence so thick it choked at him. He lost all traces of a smile.   
  
She went back to scrubbing, turning away. "I understand more than you think," she whispered, totally disgusted with human behavior at that point. Human behavior caused the mess she was cleaning up, human behavior caused the pain Faye had went through, and human nature caused what the future held.   
  
She was glad human behavior wasn't part of her system. She'd have destroyed herself if it was.   
  
Spike moved to her and slammed her up against the wall in one swift motion. She neither flinched nor felt any pain. She wasn't built for either. He stared into her eyes, infuriated with her then. "I guarantee if you start this, Spike, you won't be able to finish it," she said as she stared at him coldly.   
  
He looked into her ageless eyes and let her go, turning away and walking to turn the music off. "What are you?"   
  
"An android, Spike. A physic one who knows what you are thinking, knows what you've been through, knows all your secrets," she said as she straightened her bloody clothes. "I tell you now, don't."   
  
"Can you see the future?" He looked at her with pain filled eyes. She also saw a decision undecided, feeling blocking reason, and reason blocking feeling.  
  
"No. Do you love her?"   
  
He didn't answer as he walked out the door. He stopped to stare at her and smile. "Well, then I guess we have nothing more to discuss. I'd like that money when you come back up. I'll wait for you at your room." Then he was out the door and whistling.   
  
"Don't, Spike," she whispered to herself as if he could still hear her.   
  


  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


She opened her eyes when she heard the door close.   
  
Her skin tingled with his touch, the after math of his love she knew had to be too good to be true. Her life was brightened to an extent but she was still paralyzed, still unsure of the feelings that found rest in her heart that didn't want them.   
  
They were there all the same.  
  
The sun peeked through the windows as she stared out, stared at the new morning that should have been what she was feeling. New. Alive, and thankful he loved her, wanted her, needed her. She also knew that snow was covering the ground outside, still falling like forgotten memories of something that yearned to hurt and pain again.   
  
_Why believe that, why seek self destruction? Didn't you already have that the past half of a year? _A voice asked her. Yeah she had self destruction in her heart, in her soul as she mourned over his death that hadn't been real and the sad part was she missed that part of her that wanted death.   
  
She should have died, and she should have wanted death like she wanted nothing else.   
  
But Spike had meant more to her than death. She loved him, she loved him so much that it crossed her mind to run after him and beg for him to hold her and come back to bed. To make love to her like it was the first time again, like he was still searching for the Faye he didn't even know had been there.   
  
She sighed as she got up and got dressed knowing moments too late that once the first had been tasted than the first could not be thrown away as if it never happened. The first was the first and the last didn't matter because what was done was done, and it made no difference if one tried to take it back. It was ink on paper that couldn't be burnt or ripped up.   
  
She saw his coat laying on the floor and picked it up, putting it over her torn shirt with sad eyes. She wasn't supposed to be like that, she was supposed to be happy wasn't she? She had given herself up completely, fully, and understandingly. She could remember his same reaction to the shock of having been over her as master and servant just as she was to him in the last moments of loving afterthoughts.   
  
She felt guilty for letting him get the advantage she swore he'd never have over her.   
  
Then she was walking down the hall towards her room, humming softly a tune that was depressing and light. She was a sad picture of blood and weariness as she walked by viewers who stared at her with fear. She smiled to herself. It was more than nice to be feared. It was better than being loved and being relied upon when one wasn't sure if they could rely on even themselves let alone those around her.   
  
She opened the door and walked into her room that seemed strangely peaceful. The sun peeked through the shades, the air was filled with light emotion and she could smell the flowers that had been recently brought up by the maid.   
  
She sighed as she went over to her bag and picked out some clean clothes. She stared at the black dress on the bed in front of her and smiled sadly. The Orchestra played tonight and she had a feeling of dread at the thought.   
  
Diandre was a bounty, one she and Spike needed to catch. Would they turn in now that she saved her life? Faye didn't think she could do it, android or not.   
  
Faye didn't want to think about the future anymore, it was too confusing and too painful. Everything was going so great, she didn't want to think about things that could only ruin everything. But she couldn't help but think things were going to end in a horrible halt soon, and the feeling made her sick to her stomach as she opened the bathroom door and walked in.   
  
She felt so dizzy then as she turned on the hot water and jumped in the shower letting the steam and hateful water wash away the blood and pain from her body as she closed her eyes and lay back against the shower wall.   
  
"Spike, I know that what you gave to me will never happen again. Those kinds of weaknesses in you are so few. Yet I know that I should be happy to have had at least one night with you," she said to herself. She shampooed her hair, still quiet, still pessimistic as she sang a small song. The steam around her lifted her thoughts and feelings away for a while as tiny droplets scolded her skin to forget.   
  
"Happiness is just a word to me and it might have meant a thing or two if I had known the difference..." Then there was a ring and she stopped.   
  
It sounded like Spike's phone...  
  
She walked out and stared at his discarded coat, it's ringing filled her ears again and she reached into the pocket and answered a small communicator. She didn't have to say a word because the moment she answered a voice spoke. "I want the girl's death in exchange for Jet's life _tonight_. Our agreement will be met or the consequences will be commenced. I know both of you are at Pluto so we will meet at the Starlight Orchestra tonight. The back hall at the end of intermission. Be there, bring Faye alive and bring only her. If you don't show, if you bring others, Jet dies." There was a click then a rush of static as the person disconnected, a raspy distorted voice ringing in her ears with a small sense of betrayal flooding her soul.   
  
She stared at the phone, stared at it as if it weren't real. No, she hadn't just heard betrayal knock down her door, no she hadn't just witnessed the worst mistake of her life.   
  
"Damn, you Spike," she whispered then threw the phone into the wall and smashed it into a million pieces. She raked her hands through her wet hair as she could feel sobs wrenching her throat. She felt stabs of pain enter her soul like knives, like pins, and spikes that wouldn't move as one after the other pierced feeling and tears.   
  
She had known! That was the worst part. She had expected it, she had known it and through it all it still hurt. It still felt like she was dying inside and it still felt like she was reliving history as she saw his form walk from her in the distance, not even saying good-bye as it disappeared in blood.   
  
She dried off and put her clothes on as she walked out of the bathroom slamming the door against the wall as she walked out with rage and anger mixing with pain and lifeless knowledge.   
  
She should've known, she should've guessed. She shouldn't have been that stupid as to let him persuade her in on his little scheme, one that got her fucked up in one word and appearance.   
  
She stared at the room that had become so devoid of feeling that she shook in it's coldness. Suddenly the sun was less brighter and the place smelled of death as she screamed, and let the tears tear from her throat. "I hate you!" She screamed to the ghost of memories that would hear her. "I hate you!" She couldn't say anything else because hate was the only logical thing in her mind as she screamed and cried.   
  
She fell to her knees as she cried. She should've known...There was no excuse...It was all her fault...She poinded the floor, heard her bones crack in her hands as she hurt herself on the outside to take away the pain iniside.  
  
Then she made a decision.   
  
End her pain, end her life, and end the endless betrayal of life that had ironically been placed on Spike's shoulders.   
  
Through tears and through pain she reached over to his bag and opened it, emptying the guns, grenades, and ammunition into her bag before she had time to think Why, why did it have to be her? She asked herself in her mind as he body worked without thought or feeling. Why did he have to choose her to hurt?   
  
She screamed as she tore a gun from it's holster and shot the suit on the bed into a million pieces of scraps wishing with all her heart he was in it as she shot blindly at the walls and tables after finishing with the suit. Then she was shooting nothing, out of bullets, out of feeling, out of hate and energy to think straight as she gathered the dress in her arms and gathered her bag with his ammunition in it.   
  
She was going to go to the Orchestra, save Jet, fight for what it was worth, and then die with honor that she knew she would have otherwise not been given the privilege to have.   
  
She was going to save Jet because he mattered more to_ him _than she did. She was doing it for him because despite it all, despite her pain and hate, she still loved him and she hated herself more even as she thought that.   
  
She had known it wasn't true love, but it still hurt and she couldn't bear the tears that bore on her anymore. Too many tears in the last days to cover the ones she missed six months ago made her want to die. Dying was her destiny because there was nothing more to live for.   
  
She walked out of the hotel room and slammed the door as a crowd gathered around her. They moved away from her as she walked away, eyes wide as they peered in through the peep hole to see what the gun shots had shot. She didn't care what the hell the accusing eyes said of her, thought of her. She wasn't anything now. She had lost humanity to too much of it and she didn't give one damn about it.  
  
She was lifeless now.  
  
_Tine to die, Faye. Time to finally end it all. At least you'll die fighting and saving a life unlike Spike. _Just then Spike came around the corner, whistling and smiling. When he saw her he stopped and smiled wider.   
  
She pulled out a gun and he stopped in his tracks. "Faye, what's up? Guns are dangerous, you shouldn't be playing with them," he chastised as he began walking towards her.   
  
In a voice she didn't know she had she said to him full of hate even as her heart broke to see him. "I'm not playing. Stop or I'll shoot your ass down, fro boy." Had she really slept with him? Had she really given up her whole body and soul thinking that he was doing the same? Had she really thought that it would have worked out?   
  
No, and yes. Sensibility had warned her and her heart and soul prevailed and still did as she felt her whole demeanor falter.   
  
She was fucked up and she knew it.   
  
"Faye?" He asked as he kept walking. He closed his eyes and rubbed his head, his smile disappearing a little bit. "C'mon, you wouldn't shoot me."   
  
"Yes, I would." She said through clenched teeth and pulled the trigger as he opened his eyes too late and fell to the floor with a thud. She walked over him, stared into his eyes as tears streaked down hers under the sunglasses she slipped on. "C'mon, Spike, you wouldn't betray me," she said faking his voice. He stared at her through half lidded eyes as he tried to say something.   
  
"Yes, you, would." She answered for him as she patted his cheek hard and then turned and walked away, down the hall, down the stairs, out of the hotel, and out of his life just as he did six months before to her. Emptienss the same as then still lingered in her heart, and coldness, lifeless abandon filled her more as she fought to stay calm and think rationally.  
  
_No why, this time, Spike. You don't have to tell me why you did this too me. I don't care, I only have one last thought...Good-bye.   
  
_She hailed the nearest taxi and told him to drive to the Starlight Orchestra's theater. She had time to spare but she wanted to be there and makes sure the whole place was known to her by heart even if she was blindfolded. She was going to play her cards right and go down taking her eneimies with her if she could.  
  


~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


  
The communicator in his pocket spoke to him through dreams as he slowly awoke from a dazed sleep. Faye had shot him...  
  
He stared down at the dart sticking out of his shoulder, his head feeling heavy and tried as he tried to lift his hand to pull it out. Dejavu swept over him as he stared at it and finally took it out. Lin, Vicious, snow...The communicator was going off and making his head spin as he waited for the rest of the tranquilizer to wear off.   
  
"SPIKE PERSON!!" A voice rang through his head. He tried to form words as he brought the communicator to his mouth with heavy hands.   
  
"Wha?" He couldn't really form the 't'.  
  
"Bebop Bebop is under attack!" Ed was hysterical as her voice reached a panic state.   
  
He tried to form words, tried to say something but he was too confused, too disoriented as Ed spoke. Then he heard another voice, Ayutora's. "Spike, get your ass back up here. We need the Red Tail's ammunition!" Maybe it was the drug but Spike noticed Ayutora didn't sound too worried. But Red Dragons were never worried, they were always calm. It was a fact taught and passed on for years. He admired her for her bravery.  
  
"I...can't," he said as he took forever to form the words.   
  
"What do you mean, you can't!" Ayutora's voice rose. "Spike, are you drunk!" She screamed through the intercom.   
  
Just then Diandre came up and took the communicator from his hands. "We'll be there as soon as we can, keep fighting with the ammunition you have," her voice was soft and stern.   
  
"Faye? Is that you!"   
  
But Diandre shut the communicator off and looked down at Spike softly, knowingly. "Looks like I really didn't have to tell you 'don't'. You betrayed her already." Diandre sighed. "Or perhaps it's wiser to say, you betrayed her by not telling her the whole truth."   
  
He tried lighting a cigarette but failed and burnt his nose. "Damnitt." He hissed through numb lips.   
  
Memories toyed with his mind as he rubbed his nose. He saw himself sitting at his computer after Jet went missing and suddenly receiving a message from Jet's captor saying he or she wanted the Bebop Girl in exchange for Jet. The only problem had been there were two Bebop girls. Ed and Faye. So he brought Ed back first and a few days later had gotten a second message that stated the person wanted Faye in return for Jet. So he had gotten Ed to pin point Faye, so easily, so thoughtlessly, and effortlessly, not really thinking about the fact the woman might have changed. Her life hadn't meant anything to him until he saw her and who she had become and who she was becoming.  
  
He never expected to fall for her.   
  
"Do you love Faye?" She asked her eyes narrowing as she stared at him as if seeing the clocks whistle through his head.   
  
"Yes," he answered after thinking along moment and letting the bad facts settle in his soul. He let himself realize she was the better part of him he lost when he lost Julia.  
  
"You want to save her? You don't want her to die now that you've fallen in love with her?"   
  
"I want to save her." His voice broke and he cursed himself for it.   
  
"You love Ed, you want to save her?"   
  
"Yes." Ed was the little sister he never had, and through the fact that he hated kids, the girl had grown on him. Both girls had grown on him. Both lives had become so important that Jet's hung in a dangerously deep balance between life and death.  
  
"Then you have two choices, space cowboy. Faye and Jet or the Bebop with two useless crew members. You cannot save both." Her voice was monotone as she stared at him through cold eyes. "What will it be?"  
  


_NOTE: What do you think it will be? Very emotionless chapter where emotions should be flaring, sorry. Whining I'm so tired...I'll look over it later!  
VT_  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	12. CHAPTER 12

_Disclaimer: Cb isn't me.   
NOTE: I am so sad to see this almost to end :( If you all enjoyed it I thank you for reading it and supporting it. This has been my first Succesful fic thanks to all you who read it. THANKS SO MUCH!!! Sorry it took so long to update. This chapter is kinda messed, tho. I hope you enjoy it. It was a bitch to write.   
VT  
  
Chapter 12  
  
_

  
He heard the door open, felt her cold presence and shivered. But despite the cold fear that played over his entire being he opened his mouth to ask the question that had been nagging at him for the last three days.   
  
"Who are you?"   
  
"How long have you been waiting to ask me that?" She asked. She knew him all too well, she knew everything about him and she seemed like a world so big that nothing could fit around her or over her in the vastness of space.   
  
"A long time," he replied, obvious pain in his voice as he shifted, as he tried to find a more comfortable position in a stance that was nothing but uncomfortable. He tried to see through the blackness that covered his eyes as he groaned and felt an unyielding pain flow through his chest as cracked ribs assorted themselves to his new position.   
  
"My name is Flame. A name to you and a Goddess to others." He felt her cold breath on the back of his neck as she untied the blindfold and let it flutter to the floor like a forgotten jumble of fate that signaled for destiny to get ready for what was to come.   
  
"Flame," he said, letting the name fill his mouth like his blood had filled it days before when she had beat him, crushed his pride, and stole his dignity.   
  
She walked in front of him, her dark sunglasses over her eyes, her pale skin beautiful in the dim light bulb glow in the dark room. She smiled as she removed her dark shades and let her different colored eyes hit him with their full potential for knowledge and power, for life and for death. A dark blue, so like the innocent sky, and a silver blue so like the silver stars that ritteled that same sky with coldness and hate.   
  
Her eyes had the same effect on him as Spike's did.  
  
A sense of unreality, of difficulty comprehending between real and fantasy. She was the same and she was so different from his friend. Killer and life preserver, she was the darker of the two halves, and Spike was the brighter.   
  
"Faye is coming," she said softly, as if knowing his thoughts would refuse a rough invitation back to reality.   
  
"Why?" He asked closing his eyes. How long was she going to keep him alive and suffering?   
  
"In exchange for you," she said through the darkness of his dreams.   
  
Jet grimaced and even that small movement brought him pain and dire weariness. Faye, whatever she ever did, didn't deserve anything like what he was going through now. She didn't deserve to feel the hand of a merciless angel bring down her already beaten pride and past life. She didn't deserve to want to die.   
  
"Why do you want her?" He asked as he opened his eyes, pleading with a monster that he knew would not even consider his pleas. "How will you get her?"   
  
"Spike is bringing her for me," she replied.   
  
Jet was too numb to feel the utter shock, and utter shamefulness of a simple sentence. He was betraying a friend for someone closer? That was it, and the thought was conceited.   
  
_Spike, how could you, bud? You have to know what hell it is being here. You have to know Faye has nothing to do with me, you, or this Flame woman other than she is what the enemy wants. And I know you, you were never one to give in for the enemy. _Jet didn't want to believe it, and he couldn't make himself believe that Spike was just as treacherous as everyone else he'd distanced himself from over the years.   
  
"Why Faye?"   
  
"She's the only woman he's let back into his life," she replied coldly.   
  
"Why Spike? What did he do to you?"   
  
"He killed the better part of me."   
  
"How?' Jet stared at the sadness in her eyes and looked away. He didn't know merciless angel's knew sadness and sorrow, but this woman had them written all over her face.   
  
"In his long line of killing somewhere, he killed the only one that mattered to me." She ended the subject of who it was in the silence of an answer, one that said don't ask about who it is. You'd die before you would ever know.   
  
"Revenge isn't the best way out, it isn't always the right answer." His voice was soft, stern. A voice he often used with Spike on serious and sensitive subjects when need be.  
  
"Revenge is the only thing I know now." She moved foreword and injected him softly with a tranquilizer as he squirmed and gave up hope for any kind of redemption. There wasn't anything he could do.   
  
"Revenge doesn't have to be all you know." His voice was so weak, the drug was working on him fast.   
  
"No, maybe not. But it's what I choose and want to know. And what I've wanted has always been good enough reason for me."   
  
"Why?"   
  
She was silent.   
  
"Why, damn it!" He wanted to scream it but his voice sounded so distant as he felt his eyes close.   
  
"I'm sorry, Jet. but that's just the way life is. I am just the hidden truth that hides behind smiles and innocence that makes this world too vulnerable to be alive."   
  
Then everything went black.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


She walked into the main hall, her dress trailing down the floor, while a single white milky leg stuck gracefully out the slit of back velvet. A black silk trench coat hung around her shoulders, and her hair was set in perfect curls around her face and back. She had a few dark blue hair extensions, and few black ones to intensify the effect of her paleness and her utter exotic beauty.   
  
She stared around the crowded Theater and looked around. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, music played softly as soft mummers of voices filled her head with a musical elemental sound that made her relax through the tension in the air around her. The sweet tension-free enviorment pulled the stress and betrayal from her soul. After all, she didn't come to think of _him_ at that point, she had come to die.   
  
The carpets were blood red, and the marble they covered was a creamy gold, with twists and turns of white and gray that looked like the hands of fate dealing their cards and betting on her soul.   
  
They could bet all they wanted, she knew the night was young and pregnant with different fates, but either way she'd die. If she did happen to survive this night she'd have to die another way. So to her, anything that came from the future was pouintless, life was pointless.   
  
She sighed as the lights flickered telling her that the show was about to begin, her long wait for death was about to arrange itself in a dark void of hell. She neither wanted to step through the door that would not have a way back out or wanted to runaway. Either way she couldn't turn back, either way she'd die and the time in-between didn't matter to her at all.   
  
She pushed her hand in her pocket, fingered the small pistol inside, and walked into her balcony seat, stepping towards death, challenging something that she wouldn't be the victor over.   
  
She forgot the past then, forgot what her life was mainly consisted of because all that meant nothing in the face of Death. She thought only of the present and the after life she would embrace, heaven or hell, as the curtains opened and the music of a damned decision began.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


Faye....  
  
Her face resounded through his thoughts as he drove Diandre's ship towards the bebop's coordinates. He chose to save the ones without defenses oppose to his love that had more than enough resources to kill a whole army. She had taken his whole stash of ammunition for Christ-sakes along with both of his Orchestra tickets! If she wanted to blow the whole city up along with the Starlight Orchestra she could pretty damn well be able to, and he wasn't worried about her sorry ass, well at least that's what he kept telling himself.   
  
Anger rushed through him and then regret with a hint of guilt. He regretted leaving her behind, leaving her to a fate that he knew all too well only sought destruction and pain.   
  
_Did you ever awaken from your dream? _Her voice rang through his head as he closed his eyes and tried not to let the longing for her in his arms break him. _Yeah, Faye. I woke up and for six months it was great. I was living, really living. And then you came, and the next thing I knew I was dreaming with a dreamer I never knew I could dream with.   
  
_True he had only seen her for a few days, but in those few days he had seen a Faye he never saw before and he'd fallen hopelessly in love with an illusion he knew would end abruptly. He never dreamed that she'd ever be the one who wasn't lost in the illusion, he would never have guessed that she'd be the one walking away from a betrayal he knew had been his own fault. He never would have understood that what he had done by beginning a deal with the enemy was played the bastard in the game of fools.   
  
"You should be around the Bebop's coordinates," Diandre said over the head set he wore. He moved to get the guns ready but stopped as soon as his eyes focused.   
  
"Do you see it?" Diandre asked.   
  
Spike was silent, mystical sorrow and misbelief filled the air around him.   
  
"Spike? Spike, are you alright?"   
  
He couldn't find his voice. All he could do was try to breathe, and even that was a struggle. Yeah, the Bebop was there, just in about a million different little pieces.  
  
"Spike!" Diandre said sharply.  
  
Spike snapped out of it, rubbed his eyes, and let the impact of a total destruction of sanctuary and home hit him. "Shit!" He cried. He moved the ship in to see if any parts of his Swordfish remained, if any parts of a human remained anywhere.   
  
"What's going on?" Diandre played the other line with calmness he couldn't relate to. He turned her off and threw the head set away as he sped into the heart of where the cockpit should have been.   
  
Nothing remained, nothing flowed through him as he looked franticly for a sign, anything, that told him Ed was dead or alive. His heart picked a panic as he tried to prepare himself around each corner to recognize a hand, or a foot, or a mangled body that resembled the girl. He tried to prepare himself to be totally heart broken even though hope was still inside him, looking for something to hold tighter to even as it slowly slipped away.   
  
_Ed...  
  
_He found nothing in his efforts, just metal and dust that sparkled brighter than the stars as it drifted, and he drifted not wanting to believe, not wanting to let the knowledge break the dam of hate, hope, and pain in his heart. He'd left Faye only to find an empty grave of memories blown away. He'd left for no reason at all, for nothing but a ghost of what once was.   
  
He sat back and felt his body weaken. Felt his entire being sink into himself as he lay his hands on the controls, his knuckles white with restraint as he tried to control the emotions running through his body, hair covering the two different color portals to his soul. Then without warning he shouted out and shot the remaining parts of the Cowboy Bebop with anger and hate he never knew he possessed, never really felt until a man had called him Vicious, a student had betrayed him, and a bullet had killed his lover.   
  
Even after nothing could be shot anymore, he kept firing. Fired for all the invisible ships he had failed to attack, for the one ship he had failed to protect, for the two lives he had failed to save, and his own life in which had become pointless and insignificant again.   
  
"Ngh, Ed, you can't have died." He could feel the tightening in his heart as he closed his eyes tight trying to deny what his eyes were telling him. Ed, the one he'd betrayed to fate, and love. Ed, the one who called him Lunk head and Spike person....  
  
Then he thought of Faye. The way she had touched him with her lips as she gave herself up to him, trusted him, wanted him, needed him. He thought of her pain, her suffering, her fragile ideas that shattered when she found out someway that he had been planning on betraying her.   
  
Then he thought of Jet. The times they had spent together. The rough, the bad, the anguished, and the amsuing. He thought of thier hardships, thier money problems, his bad food, the endless talks of anything but the past. The way he had betrayed Jet with his heart when he kissed Faye and dared to fall in love with her.   
  
All relaionships meant so much to him and all were falling and breaking apart if not broken already by death. He betrayed them all, and all he could do was pray he'd have a chance to explain.   
  
He wished he could explain to Ed that her death had been an accident. He could of cared less about Ayutora.   
  
Then he thought of the enemy, the one who was making his life hell and suffering his relatinoships through everything he went through. He knew the enemy he was up against was deadly. That their resources were endless because the technology that prevented Ed from tracking the messages left for him had to require a lot of technology, a lot of resources, and a lot of money to achieve. No amateur was playing with him. No, Spike knew he was playing with a very high-tech organization because not even the Red Dragons had information that could help him when the messages he had received had been decoded and understood.   
  
He knew as he stared at the destruction before him, that even if he went in with the best of his men to kill his enemy had he'd known where they were, there was a good chance the army waiting for them would kick their asses. But Faye was at the Theater watching the Orchestra with _his _tickets he had searched for an hour for in the ruin of his room for. She was relaxing and safe and he didn't have to worry about her, he only needed to worry about the destruction before him and how he was going to get revenge.   
  
_Calm down, _he told himself. _Think, think about what your next moves are going to be. The people that could have attacked the Bebop may not even be the same as Jet's captors.  
  
_Either way there wasn't anything he could do about a past he couldn't a erase and a future he couldn't change until the enemy contacted him again. He slammed his fists on the control panel in front of him as he hissed in frustration. "Damn it!" He turned the ship around and headed towards Pluto again, punching in the coordinates so hard his finger tips hurt.   
  
Then he closed his eyes and lay back once more. He tried to slow his breathing, his heart, and his anger as he forced himself to drift, to fall into a dream that focused on the only thing that brought him peace even if anxiety was tied to thinking of a way to make her trust him again. But as long as she was alive, whether she hated him or loved him, that was enough to satisfy him.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


She walked into the back hall, setting the detonator on the wall as she walked in wearily. It was beginning and she wasn't sure if she was even ready.   
  
The hallway was dark, angry as it grasped for the light of the door she had opened crept in daintily. She tried to focus her eyes but nothing returned to her as nothing as she squinted.   
  
Then the lights flew on and she was left standing in the middle of a bright hallway, a row of men on each side of the balcony pointing guns down at her as she looked into the eyes of her enemy.   
  
"It's you," Faye whispered with surprise and hate.   
  
The woman threw an unconscious but bloody Jet on the floor at her feet as she smiled. "Where is Spike?" Her face was emotionless as she stared at Faye coldly.   
  
"He's not here. But you won't need him if I am turning myself in." Faye lifted up her hands, the detonator button on her wrist becoming hot as she anticipated a move and counter attack. Her heart beat wildly, but Faye forced her body to relax. She needed to be ready for anything.   
  
Anger passed through the woman's features. "I want Spike." She clenched her teeth as she kicked an unconscious Jet.   
  
"Stop it!" Faye cried angrily as she stepped foreword. She took out a gun and pointed at her enemy's chest, she could hear the sound of rifles being cocked as she pulled back the hammer and smiled ironically. "Kick him again and I'll shoot. Why do you want Spike?"   
  
The woman smiled. "I'll do whatever the hell I want." She kicked Jet again and Faye put pressure on the trigger as sweat poured down her forehead. The woman shrugged. "I want Spike here to see your face when I kill you."   
  
Faye's heart stopped but went on going again after a second. "Kill me, I'd be happy if you would." Faye put the gun down and dropped it, kicking it to the woman who stood without weapons or ammunition. "I'm ready to die, so kill me!" Faye shouted when no one moved, no one even cocked another rifle.   
  
The woman stared up at her. Face expressionless. "Oh, no Faye. You don't get it. I want to hear you scream and beg for me. I want you to scream his name, and beg him to help you when he can't. Then I want him to die and I want to hear his screams as he gives his life for yours" Her voice was so cold, so evil, and so merciless. Faye stood without flinching.   
  
She loved Spike through everything he did, and she would protect him, would love him even if he betrayed her the world. She'd died before he'd have a chance to give himself up for her, even if she knew that him doing something like that wasn't what would happen in a situation of her life or his. Hers wasn't important to him.   
  
"I won't let you take him or me without a fight." And with that Faye detonated the bomb on the door and threw the grenade at the woman as she jumped and tried to dodge the bullets.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


"Spike!" Diandre's voice was loud and angry as he woke up.   
  
"Wha?" He rubbed his eyes as he viewed an expressionless Diandre on the monitor in front of him.   
  
"Where are you?" She asked as her silver eyes stared at him through a blank window that neither hindered nor disturbed their depths.   
  
He checked his stats. "An hour away, why?" He sat up and smoothed back his unruly hair.   
  
"There has been an explosion at the Starlight Theater. You better get back quick."   
  
Spike was already accelerating when the screen went blank.   
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  



	13. CHAPTER 13

_Disclaimer: Cb is not mine and never will be. sadly Oh man I wish it was though.   
NOTE: Ok this is, well I dunno, might be the last chapter. So read on. VT  
  
Chapter 13  
Ya know what they say about thirteen, unlucky _  


  
In an endless rain of bullets she fought, she didn't care, she didn't feel, and she didn't think. It was the simple, it was that understandable, and it was that easy. She could pretend it all wasn't real, pretend it all wasn't happening, and she could just forget because soon she wouldn't be able to help but forget.  
  
"Why do you fight?" The woman cried over the sounds of firing and shouts. Faye hid behind parts of the rubble of the wall the grenade had blown. She could hear behind her useless screams of children and women as the men ushered them out of the violent building.   
  
She reached into her trench coat and pulled out twin guns and began firing without thought, only primal instinct of precision and accuracy. She saw blood, felt it run down her face, arms, shoulders, and legs, and through red she saw ten men fall to their deaths. Then she was crouching down behind the pile of rubble again, cursing and gasping for breathe through the pain. Damn her to hell if she was going to be taken out so easily.   
  
She could taste it, smell it, feel it. In the end it all came down to it. Blood. In the end that was what it was all about, the longing and aching for it, the death and life, and weakness and power in it. One died because of it, and one lived to spill it. It was part of human nature and it was part of her, and it was part of the world she was going to escape. How ironic she loose the only thing tying her to the world, tying her to a physical plain that would throw her to the dogs if it could.   
  
She didn't know where she had been shot, all she knew is she was still alive and living through the pain. She was alive to fight, she was alive to save Jet, and she was alive only to die.   
  
"Let's go for it," she said to herself as she pulled out her rifle and jumped from the rubble as she fired and ran towards the woman and Jet.   
  
She could see the two in an automatic version of slow motion. She was getting there, she was almost there, she could almost reach them and bullets were shattering bones, skin, muscles before she made it. But then she was there, and shooting at the woman who dodged and hit her in the stomach with her foot.   
  
The firing had stopped as Faye dropped the rifle and began a deadly battle that would choose life or death in the end. The woman was angry, filled with rage as she picked Faye up and slammed her into the wall, slammed her into the other wall, and threw her to the ground. Every movement was marked, was sought to kill, hurt, and damage.  
  
Faye could feel bones crack, blood spill, and pain rip through her as she cried out, not meaning to and filled with shame because she had. The dress ripped around her shoulders and tore as concrete grabbed for the precious material. She jumped up, through it all in a shower of blood, in a shower of anguish greater than physical wounds. "Fuck you, I'll kill you before you win this game, Faye hissed through clenched teeth as her heart filled her eyes, her hate emerged from it's darkest regions.   
  
The woman smiled and laughed. "What game, Faye? The game of life and death?" She charged as Faye ducked and hit her hard under the ribs. The woman went sprawling but was up in an instant. Her reflexes were catlike and acute, fierce and gently dangerous.   
  
"The game of my heart, bitch!" Then Faye charged, smacking her across the face, hitting her in the ribs, kicking her in the stomach, punching her in the chest, kicking her again, and punching her in the face, backing her into a wall where the woman's back repeatedly hit up against the wall with the force of Faye's blows. She let her anger flow into everything she did, let her rage and betrayal and shame rocket through her fists and into a helpless body that could do nothing but gasp and choke blood.   
  
"Damn you! It's all your fault!" Faye could feel the scolding tears as they ran down her face and scarred her soul. She grabbed the woman by the neck and threw her up against the wall as a flood of emotions emptied themselves in violence and cost Faye her sanity over life for an instant. She looked down as the woman began to choke. "You ruined the only good thing in my life. The only good thing I remember feeling!" Faye screamed with hot headed tears of frustration, pain, anguish, self hatred, and uncertainty. She could feel sobs rip her throat unbearably as she let the full force of Spike's betrayal and her decision hit her and tear her soul apart. How could she have been so stupid as to let him back in her heart? It was her fault for letting herself think things had changed. But Faye didn't want to blame herself so she blamed the next best person. "I believed in something, I believed in happiness and you fucking stole that away!" Faye's face looked up and stared at the choking woman in her grasp as she hissed out every word meant for her own life as well as for the woman's. It was all her fault, all her stupid fate that had made Spike betray her. Faye wished he would have stayed dead to her to make the pain in her heart stop.   
  
She choked on tears.   
  
She stared into the woman's eyes. Blue eyes wide, different colors, just like his...   
  
She dropped the woman to the floor, who had only stared at her blankly without one choking sound, or plea for help.   
  
Faye wanted to die. She didn't care, she never cared. But she felt so tired, so sad, so heart broken that if the woman killed her slow or fast it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, nothing was nothing and she couldn't make into something. She'd only tried to only fail.   
  
Failing was the worst part of trying. It was the worst part of giving it your all only to watch it crumble at your feet.   
  
She stared at her dirty and blood soaked hands. All her own, all her pain, all her sorrow and all her life lay before her. She could end it...She could say good-bye forever...  
  
"Faye.." She heard the voice, so soft and comforting. She looked up.   
  
Jet stood uneasily as he stared at her through dazed eyes. His face so bruised and beaten, his whole body mangled and mercilessly broken. She ran to his side as he almost collapsed.   
  
"Leave me," he muttered.   
  
She could feel his sadness, his shame, his utter self hatred for letting everything happen the way it did. But it wasn't his fault, it wasn't anyone's because life played games like that and there was no one to blame except for life itself.   
  
"I can't, Jet. I won't." Her voice was soft as she began walking him towards the door. She didn't care about the men who were cocking their guns ready to fire, she didn't care about the woman she'd left behind. She cared about loyalty, friendship, all that Spike had failed to give, all that she had failed to realize he lacked. And even that she only _thought_ she cared about. She only cared because she knew she was supposed to.   
  
Then she felt the sting in her shoulder and she stopped for only a moment as she kept walking towards the door, Jet's weight slowly getting heavier. She caught the glance of the tranquilizer dart sticking out from her shoulder but ignored it. Her only thought was Jet's safety. She grabbed her pistol in her pocket as she took it out and pulled back the hammer while supporting Jet with the other. She had to get ready to fight, had to get ready to risk a life that wasn't worth risking.   
  
The road before her seemed longer, tougher, as her pace slowed, as the drug worked it's way into her system, but she kept walking, kept seeing that distant dream that wasn't getting any nearer.  
  
"Faye, let me go, run before the drug knocks you out." Jet whispered in her ear as if it were painful. But she couldn't hear him all she heard in her mind was the voice of loyalty and confidence, and then she began to run. His weight was nothing, she could feel the adrenaline pass through her like an intoxicating perfume that overrode anything.   
  
She let him fall at the feet of a running man who only stooped and looked into her eyes to understand. Take him, and get the hell out.   
  
Then she was running back, pistol in hand as she focused on the figure who stood waiting for her.   
  
"Die, Ayutora." She said as she moved her hand up and aimed. The world blurred as she fired and then fell to the ground in dead blackness.   


  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  


  
_"Who are you, Faye?" _  
  
I don't know, and I don't care. Go away. _She was in a tight ball as she floated in a blue clear ocean that allowed her to breath and float in the water. Beautiful exotic fish passed her as she floated in a fetal position waiting for the end of time in the endless blue. Please, it had to come soon. Time was running out for her because time had always been against her.  
_  
_"Faye." _  
  
What? _She felt her eyes open as she looked around, looking for something to help her escape the voice in her head. All she saw was endless blue- perfect, unchanging, clear. _  
  
_"You love him." _  
  
I don't. He betrayed me once, he betrayed me twice, he will betray me again. _She felt something hit her as a beating heart warmed her and longed to bring her back. No, she thought. Stop the heart that doesn't want to beat, stop the pain that never wanted to be felt. Stop the trusting so innocent that it couldn't help but be destroyed.  
  
"You love him despite everything. Why can't you see that he is part of who you are whether you hate him or love him?" The voice sounded so pleading, so knowing. "Hate and love both come from the hear, both effect the person feeling them."   
  
Faye was tired, she didn't want to talk about it anymore. Didn't have the heart to fight it anymore. _Leave me alone, go away. I don't care what the hell you think, what the hell you want. I want to go to sleep forever, escape my problems, and leave you the fuck behind!   
  
_Then she felt it, coldness, emptiness, sorrow like she never felt before. And then the anger, the rage that boiled inside her and around her, one that caused her to scream and cry out for mercy and patients. Memories filled the water around her as it seethed for truth in all the lies she ever lived. "I don't want to hide anymore, Faye!" The voice cried. "I don't want to be pushed down in your subconsciousness anymore. I'm here, I'm part of you, live with it because I am coming out!" The water around Faye was becoming unbearably hot and she found she couldn't breathe anymore. She couldn't talk.   
  
"I am tried of it all, all your shit, your pride. Stuff it and swallow it because things happen that will change you forever but you inside will never die if you don't stop being brave. Stop being a coward and stop hiding in coldness, and fake emptiness. Embrace what you can, forget what you can't." The voice had become so much softer now. The water calmer as the memoires embraced her, embraced the feelings he gave to her unselfishly. How could he love her and betray her? How could he want her and give her away?  
  
_What do you want? _Faye managed. Tears soaked her face, separate from the water around her as memories of short lived kisses and passion surged in their salty depths.   
  
"To live."   
  
_

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


Jet woke up and found himself in a hospital bed, his body feeling rested but sore, and his chest feeling heavy but light. Spike was there looking out the window. "Hey, bud," Jet said through parched lips and throat. He could feel the pain inside him protest to his voice and movements.   
  
Spike turned and smiled. "Hey there, old man. How's it going?" He sat down in the chair next to the bed.   
  
_There you go again, hiding the pain I know is there. You messed up bad and it wasn't your fault. _Jet knew the look of fake happiness in his friend's eyes all too well. "A few broken ribs here and there, a few sores, but hey I'm better than ever. Could you pass the water over here?"   
  
Spike grabbed the pitcher and poured some, handing it gingerly to his friend who took it and gulped in one swallow. It felt so good to have water, to have something soothing your throat. "How'd you know I was here?" Jet rubbed a bandaged hand over his bandaged head, not expecting to feel the coarse layers of cloth over his smooth hairless globe. He stared at his hand as if noticing the wrap for the first time.   
  
He was so happy to be alive. But his life for Faye's...It didn't seem quite fair.   
  
"Diandre, a friend of mine, told me a man named Jet Black was shipped to the local hospital. She recognized the name..." He wanted to say from his thoughts when she read them but didn't want to confuse Jet so he stopped there. "Well, man, you look like shit." Spike joked around and touched Jet's shoulder reassuringly, veering off the subject. "But it's only a matter of time before we're off bounty hunting again like the old days, right?"   
  
Jet smiled at the thought. _To have everything like it was before..._He let his mind be persuaded out of the dark thoughts for an instant. "Yeah, just like the old days. And this _old man_ is the one who repairs all the damn scratches you put on your ship so I would be nice to him if I were you"   
  
"But you're _not_ me," Spike said smiling impishly. Then he looked at his feet and looked up at Jet for forgiveness. "Uh but we'll have to find a new ship.." Spike rubbed his head and laughed uneasily.   
  
Jet's voice could be heard through the whole hospital as he sat straight up and knocked over all the equipment he was hooked up to. "WHAT?!" He grabbed Spike's collar and began to shake him despite the pain in his whole body. "What the hell happened? The Bebop, you're kidding right? Uahhh, it can't be, no!!' Jet was rambling.   
  
Spike's eyes shone with bitter memories.  
  
"Ed's dead." The words dropped like bullets.  
  
Jet stopped, paused with a feeling of numbness and set Spike down as the green haired man got up and stared at the window.   
  
"How?" he felt his whole heart go hollow. _Ed...  
  
_"She was in the ship when it was destroyed." Spike turned away from the window and stared up at Jet with serious eyes of brutality. "Do you know where Faye is?"  
  
Jet could see something glimmer in Spike's eyes as he said the woman's name. "She's gone." Jet couldn't find a better way to describe it. Faye's eyes lingered in his mind, her determination, her sorrow, her pain. "She's changed."   
  
"Yeah," Spike said as he gathered his coat and began walking towards the door.   
  
"You've changed." Jet could see the way Spike's back tightened, the way his shoulders sagged.   
  
Spike looked over his shoulder and stared at his friend from the corner of his eye, the same look he gave when Jet asked about Julia a few months ago. Then Spike smiled and brushed the sadness away. "Get better, Jet. We need to start working out a way to get a new ship." Then he left and closed the door softly.   
  
"Be careful, Spike. Last time you cared for a girl you died trying to save her. Don't make that mistake again." He sighed and sat back, then he began to weep. "My ship..." he sobbed.   


~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


  
  
Spike walked into the ruins of the back hallway of the theater. Blood soaked the walls, bodies scattered the floor like forgotten paper as police searched the area for clues.   
  
Any of that blood could have been hers, any of that blood could have been death, any of that blood could have been an innocent bystander's. Had he failed Faye again by choosing to go after Ed instead of her? Spike sighed as a police woman came up to him and told him roughly he was not permitted on the premises.   
  
"FBI," he said as he opened his wallet and flashed his Red Dragon badge that looked like an FBI's. The woman nodded then went back to work as he was permitted to walk around freely.   
  
"Faye," he muttered her name as if it would bring her back. He knew it wouldn't but he dreamed it would. Dreamed that she was with him instead of somewhere all alone thinking he betrayed her, hurting in more ways than one because of his stupidity. His heart tore in half, and when was the last time he'd loved this deeply?   
  
He had loved Julia, but it had been a need, a selfish feeling to know he wasn't alone, or wasn't defeated by the life he was living. Faye, she was there, she wasn't just a need, she also was something he needed to keep giving to, felt he had to do something to erase the pain in her eyes, the emptiness, the lost unfulfilled promises. He felt he owed her something, and he wanted to give her something, whereas Julia he felt he just needed.   
  
And wasn't love wanting and giving not just one or the other?   
  
Then a crow sounded through the air, and landed on his shoulder. Spike stared at it, and then saw a note at it's feet. He took the small paper and shooed the bird away. It had only a few words and as Spike read he could feel anger and rage rush through him.   
  


_How much can you love a woman?   
Would you give your life for her?   
Would you suffer if she died?  
Would you hate her tormentors if she should suffer?   
I'd like to find out.  
Meet me at the Lost Rendago Bar at 12 tonight.   
We showdown for your love, and we showdown for your life, Space Cowboy.  
Sincerely,  
Flame **Ayutora Grustaki**_  


  
"Someone get that bird out of here!" Someone was shouting.  
  
Spike crumpled the paper and took his gun out. He shot the bird down in one shot from the ceiling it was flying around, his eyes gleaming with hate and rage. Then he turned from the startled police officers and walked out of the hallway as silence followed his aching world of dreams. _  
  
  
_  
  



	14. CHAPTER 14

_Disclaimer: CB is not mine, and never will be. :(  
NOTE: Please read my other fic, **the blues of a child**. It's about Spike's life and readers are needed badly. Sorry it took so long for me to update this one.   
I didn't have time to read this over....so forgive the msistakes.   
VT  
Chapter 14_  


  
She opened her eyes feeling a sense of unreality as she stared into a dark room of nothing. It was black, like her heart, like the feeling of everything weighing her down so heavily all she wanted to do was sleep forever. But something inside her, the true and real Faye emerged and scolded her, telling her to be brave and not to loose the hope that was hidden beneath the pain and memories. Then the personality faded only growing stronger in the lost regions of her soul.   
  
Faye didn't know who she was but she was getting a feeling of almost knowing.   
  
"You're awake." A voice reached out from the farthest reaches of the darkness and Faye turned towards the voice. A silhouette was darker than the blackness around her and the figure moved towards Faye with slight determination.   
  
Then reality hit her, and Faye was fully awake as wounds and angry pain of reality shot through her making her grimace and twist. Her hands and feet were bound and her mouth was gagged as she tried to move about for a way to escape. There wasn't an escape in the endless night of chains. Faye felt the cool metal of thick chains around her bare wrists as she struggled to bring them to her mouth and toss the cloth away that impaired speech, her words of hate.  
  
Ayutora had her, Ayutora Spike's consort. She was a Red Dragon and Red Dragons were deadly. Faye knew that from experience and knowledge, both in which she wished she had nothing to do with.   
  
Faye tried to speak through the blood soaked cloth but failed in an utterless sound that sounded animal.  
  
"What is it, Faye? Want to call me a bitch?" Ayutora's voice echoed through the darkness as Faye tried to speak.   
  
Then a small light turned on and the dusty room was illuminated to be nothing but a storage space, bare to the bone except for blood covered walls and floor. Ayutora smiled next to her, her long fiery hair a mix of blood and hell as it glowed angrily in the light. The woman who stood before Faye now was nothing like the disarranged child she had met earlier on the Bebop. The woman was seriously dressed in black, her coat filled with silver knives and weapons, her hair was loose like wisps of fire licking her shoulders, and her eyes, they were two different shades of blue instead of the intense green they were earlier. They were filled with hate and rage, both silent and even more deadly in nothingness.   
  
Faye stared at the woman angrily, her purple hair plastered to her face, the curls all but gone and the extensions torn away. Her face, arms, and legs were covered with scratches like angry red lines of defiance to the pale skin they marked. Her black silk dress was ruined with blood and tears, some her own doing and some just from the sheer violence it took for her to kill.   
  
But Jet was all right and Spike was safe....That was all that mattered.   
  
Ayutora stepped forward and removed the gag from Faye's mouth, her hands gentle but full of deadly power. Her hands were small and delicate, dangerous and murderous. She had the hands of a killer.   
  
"You're a piece of work," Faye said roughly as she spat on the floor to get the taste of blood out of her mouth. Her saliva was red and the darkness of that blood filled her with fear. As much as she hated to admit she wasn't ready to die yet. The old feelings were the same just not ready to be carried out with actions and purposes.   
  
Even if her feelings didn't change she did and was, she was changing a lot. But this was the last change, she was more like developing into that change. And no matter what, she'd be the catipiller who got her wings to be a butterfly with a tortured soul. She would become who she was inside and the feelings she had wouldn't change but instead alter to fit the Faye that was always there. She would emerge from the shell of a woman betrayed and cold from pasts and a broken heart only to die, because either way she was not immortal.  
  
"What are you thinking about, Faye Valentine?" The woman said softly. Her voice entered Faye's thoughts with caressing love, a feeling both fake and forced.   
  
Faye picked up her head and stared Ayutora, eyes filled with rage and a hunger to know who she was. "Why?" Her voice was soft deadly, and everything inside her burned to find a question deep within her that failed to surface and be known, answer and enigma.   
  
"Why what?" The woman crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.   
  
"Why are you being such a bitch?" Faye's voice was soft and rough. She blew some strands of hair from her face feeling the dried blood on her cheeks crack and break away from her fair skin.  
  
Ayutora didn't like that and she stepped forward, slapping Faye hard across the face.   
  
Faye smiled as the blood fell down her chin, the pain in her body faded as new wounds opened and her shoulders began shaking with hysterical laughter. She didn't know why she was laughing, she didn't care. But the pain, the anguish, the tears, everything was becoming too much. She was tired of it all, the sadness the heavy weight of emptiness, the darkness of not wanting what she had and needing it even when she couldn't have it. Why couldn't she just throw it all away? Act like it wasn't there, was never there, and would never be again?  
  
"Stop, laughing!" Ayutora slapped Faye again, but Faye looked up with defiance and laughed again, blood streaking her face, the ends of her hair dripping with it.   
  
"Make me," Faye hissed as she spat at Ayutora's feet and smiled. "C'mon little girl, beat me, beat someone tied and at a disadvantage. Are you happy with yourself on the fact that you can beat someone _bound_." Faye laughed bitterly, she was feeling light headed but she didn't care, she was reckless with over emotion. She was reckless with indifference. Faye mocked Ayutora's youth, the way her eyes still held the ignorant bliss of not knowing everything, the way her aura showed she was wearing shoes too big for her feet.   
  
Ayutora slapped her hard again and every time after that Faye laughed, or smiled through the pain. She would not give her enemy the satisfaction of crying out, of screaming for mercy she didn't know how to beg for.   
  
Then, after various blows to her face, Ayutora stabbed her with a knife and Faye gasped at the sudden sharp object sticking out of her shoulder. She was breathing heavy as she felt her shoulder go numb and her whole body agonize in harmony. Purple strands covered a blood scarred face, tears mixing with blood.   
  
"I'll make you stop laughing a thousand times more, Faye." Ayutora smiled with satisfaction at the defeated Faye.   
  
But Faye was far from defeated.  
  
She looked up through blood stained hair and smiled ruefully. _"You _won't _make_ me do _anything_," she said as she laughed bitterly and forcefully. The pain in her shoulder agonized but Faye ignored it the best she could. She could feel more blood leak out of the corner of her mouth as her smiled widened. "You're a fucking _kid_, and I won't give into you!"   
  
Ayutora's face was filled with rage. "You don't understand, Faye. I love to hear people scream, and I want very badly to hear you scream." Her voice was just above a whisper, deadly to the core.   
  
Faye stared just as hard. "_You_ don't understand, I don't take orders from anyone. You hear me? Anyo-" She was cut off with a hard blow to the jaw and another stab of the knife in her shoulder again. Faye could feel the tip of the blade touch the back of the iron chair she sat in as she grimaced and gasped, biting her tongue, refusing to scream or cry out. Her smile was weak when she looked up again but there all the same.   
  
Ayutora stabbed her again, same spot, same knife, a small click of the tip hitting the iron echoing through the room. Faye could feel the tip with the back of the chair, feel her body slink against disaster as she grimaced but still managed to keep her smile. After ten more times, Ayutora gave up and Faye had all but lost every hint of mirth in her eyes. All that remained was an emotionless smile of an angel fallen from grace.   
  
Blood soaked both of them and Faye felt lightheaded and dizzy. Then she was laughing again and Ayutora grabbed the hilt of her knife and pulled it out of Faye's shoulder slowly, every second causing pain and making her laugh harder, more determined not to give into the darkness and pain of the night that she lived in. And then everything was growing black and she could feel the tip of the knife slip across her throat and her other shoulder before she drifted.   
  
She wanted to speak but she didn't know if her words were heard.  
  
"I will not give in."   
  
Then her eyes snapped open when Ayutora grabbed her hair forcefully. "No, but you will break. You will scream and when you do you won't stop until I say so!" Her blue eyes were angry and filled with fire, hate and rage of something past the memories of time. Ayutora smiled as she traced the tip of the bloody blade over Faye's face, stopping at the her upper lip and tracing the pink curves before slipping the tip in the opening of her nose. "Faye, when you scream and beg for mercy," she began as she pushed the blade higher. "I will be the one to laugh." Her eyes watched the blade as she twisted it, and turned it around, blood leaking down Faye's chin and onto her ruined dress. Then she kissed Faye's chin evilly and lapped at the blood on her ruby red lips as she removed the knife and stabbed Faye in the other shoulder, opposite the one that was already bloody and ruined.   
  
Faye grimaced but smiled as her world shifted with hate and loss of blood. Pain was everything else and death was knocking on her door. Ayutora stared straight into Faye's eyes. "You may not give in but I always win!"   
  
Faye laughed bitterly. "You may always win but I always get what I want. And I want you dead." Faye spat in Ayutora's face, blood streaking the woman's cheek as she straightened and turned her back to Faye. Faye watched as Ayutora wiped the blood away with the sleeve of her shirt.   
  
"Big mistake, Faye Valentine." She walked towards the rusted door in the corner.   
  
Faye coughed and smiled. "Maybe." Faye agreed. She could see Ayutora's tomb stone in her mind. "Maybe not."   
  
Ayutora turned and threw another knife next to the one already sticking out of Faye's shoulder. Faye fell backwards from the force and landed in a heap on the bloodied floor. The concrete scraped the side of her face and her whole body collided with more pain than she wanted to realize.   
  
"We will see who will win between winners and wants." Then the lights went out and Faye was left in the coldness of her pain and the echo of the iron rusted door.   
  
"I get _everything_ I want," Faye whispered before her world went black. _Everything. _  
  
  
  


~*~*~*~*~  


  
  
  
  
Spike smoked as he watched Diandre set up her first move in their game of pool. "Who are you meeting at midnight?" The android was emotionless like always as her eyes scanned her first shot. Spike had not said a word about the letter but Diandre was a physic that knew more than he'd want to admit.   
  
"Flame Ayutora Gratsuki." Spike could feel the anger register inside him as he thought of the little punk of a woman he had thought he could trust. Annoyance, yes, traitor, he'd never even thought of her as thus.   
  
The android stopped in mid hit as she straightened. "Flame.." She repeated the name with some feeling that caused Spike to pick his head up and stare at her.   
  
"What's the name to you?" He asked as he sipped his drink on the side. He stared at the eyes of the android, so lost and warm with rising emotion. There was a silence that cut through him, and cut through the stifle air of the bar.   
  
The android bent, hit her mark and sent two balls rolling into their sockets. She sipped some of her drink and set the cup down hard as she turned to Spike her eyes radiating rage. "She is my creator, and my enemy." The android turned away. "She is my mother. She is my life and she is my death." The android's voice was void of feeling but the words themselves were full of more emotion than Spike had known an android could possess.   
  
"Mother? Creator? Is she a scientist?" Spike sighed and brushed his hands through his hair as if to clear away all the uncertainty around him.   
  
"She's smarter than a scientist, Cowboy." Diandre walked around and sat down at the bar that was empty except for a drunken old man across the way. Spike sat next to her and urged her with his eyes to tell him more. He needed information on the enemy he had no idea about.   
  
Diandre sighed. "I had a feeling it was Flame, ever since you came I knew she was tied to you somehow." She shook her head as if trying to clear it from some dirty thought."I just never thought I'd have to mention her name again." She stared at the glasses and selections of alcohol on the wall in front of her, her eyes distant in memories.   
  
"You have to be careful, Cowboy. She is psychic like me, she has powers. Except hers are very different from mine though I have her genes and get my powers from her. She has a fake eye because she lost one in an accident. In that eye she sees glimpses of the future, and she knows truths that no one should know until the future happens." Diandre shook her head and then stared at Spike, her eyes cold again, and searching. _She is like you, except you see the past in one eye, _her eyes said as her lips moved. "Now that I think of it, I think she created me to use against you." She smiled without feeling. "But she didn't plan on my own abilities colliding with her own." Diandre sighed.   
  
"She created you using her own DNA?" Spike tried to fit his very limited knowledge of science to use.   
  
The android laughed. "Something like that. But not only hers, others as well. I am a little part of everything, a modern day mutt, so to speak."   
  
Spike smiled. "Modern day mutt. I like that." He turned and rested his elbows on the bar. "Is there a way to beat her without using too much resources?"  
  
"Even after all this you will not call on the Red Dragons to help you find Faye? I thought you loved her."   
  
"I do."   
  
"Why not use all your resources then?"   
  
Spike closed his eyes and pulled his head back. "The Red Dragons are a past that Faye has given up. Even if she said she wanted to join, I know she wouldn't really want to, I wouldn't let her anyway. The Red Dragons, they aren't a group that helps, only destroys and to have Faye live from a group meant to kill would not set well with her in the future." Spike sighed and looked straight ahead. "Faye, she thinks she has things figured out, but she is so unpredictable that even she doesn't know what's going on inside her. I don't want to cause her pain by confusing her more and have her enemy in the past save her in the future."   
  
"Why? She would understand?"   
  
"No, Faye's got confusion in her head now. Confusing her more would make her hate me more when she does see things clearly. She hates me deep inside for failing her. It hurts to think I've done that." Spike turned and looked at Diandre. "I don't want to risk her hating me more by saving her with the very things that in a way destroyed her by taking me out of her life."   
  
"Very self-centered, Cowboy."   
  
Spike didn't know why he was talking so much. Never in his life had he talked to anyone as much as he was talking to the android. But he was comfortable because either way, said or thought, she would know. She would know and did know everything he'd ever felt or ever thought because her ability to see into his soul was vast.   
  
"Yes, maybe I am." He put his cigarette out in the ash tray beside him.  
  
"Faye may or may not understand, but she would be safe. Love is unconditional, you should not want her love in return. You should want her safety whether she hates you or not. That is what love is, call the Red Dragons for you will not win against Flame's army without them." Diandre stood. "If Faye is dead what will it matter if she hates or loves you?"   
  
Spike thought a moment and briefly saw Faye's funeral. "Nothing would matter if Faye died."   
  
Diandre nodded like she had anticipated his answer even before he spoke. "Then saddle up, Cowboy. Gather your horses and pioneers. You have four hours to prepare for the largest showdown of your life."   
  
Spike looked at Diandre and shook his head. "I can't..."   
  
"If Faye hates you or loves you, it won't matter. Both feelings come from the heart. It is fact that one could not hate without loving first, the same the other way around. Stop thinking of yourself, because it is most certainly selfish, and think of the life you hold in your hands. I tell you now Faye's life will not be spared if you do not call upon an army." Diandre grabbed Spike's arm and pulled him off the chair.   
  
Spike could see Faye's smile, her eyes, her pleading words and searing lips. _Faye..._ Diandre was right. What did it matter if Faye was dead? She wouldn't even be there to hate or love him, she would just be gone.   
  
"Where's the nearest phone?"   
  
Diandre smiled. "C'mon, Cowboy, we've got some planning to do."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	15. CHAPTER 15

_Disclaimer: CB is not mine and never will be.   
Note: I have no idea where this story is going. I write as I write and it comes out bad or good.   
Enjoy.   
As usual I didn't get a chance to review.   
~VT~_  
_  
Chapter 15_  


  
"Why are were created as a healer if you were both companion and fighter?" Spike was loading the artillery Diandre had bought for him back at the hotel. His mind wandered back to Faye, but he honestly didn't want to think of her because it brought too much pain to think of the possibility that she might be dead.   
  
"Loyalty, obedience, and protection, the perfect pet, wouldn't you agree?" She was standing by the window looking out of it as the snow came down past its shinny depths.   
  
"Yeah," Spike said grimly remembering his loyalty and obedience to the Red Dragons. How ironic he become the brain and heart after being the hands and feet of the Syndicate for so long.   
  
"Why did you leave her?" He was prying into something that read forbidden but he didn't care. He was grasping for anything to take his mind off Faye.   
  
Diandre turned to him and stared at him blankly. He didn't know what to think of her. She was unpredictable, at times she was so human and other times she was vastly cold. Her emotions ranged from deep sadness, to happiness, to nothing all, and every movement was a surprise because she acted human enough but the order in the way she did human things was inhuman. He shook his head, he was dwelling on things that didn't matter all that much and he quickly turned his attention back to the clip he was loading.   
  
"I left because," she paused as if she didn't know what to say. He looked up to her and her eyes were filled with puzzlement staring in the distance. "I left because I love and hated her. It that makes sense to you." She sighed. "I know androids are not supposed to feel but to me they are always some possibility in the distance that's there but something I cant reach."   
  
"Why does she want Faye? Why did she want Jet?" Spike sighed, knowing he never knew why Flame was attacking only knowing she needed to be eliminated because she was a threat. The hell with why she attacked the fact was she did, and she needed to be erased as a threat.  
  
"She wants to hurt you." Diandre's voice was distant.   
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because you hurt her."  
  
"How?" Spike stopped loading the clip and threw it on the bed next to the others.   
  
"You took away her lover." Diandre's back was turned completely. Her profile was so human like that Spike found it hard to believe she wasn't.   
  
"Who?" Spike had killed so many people he couldn't think...  
  
"Vicious..."   
  
Spike's heart froze. Vicious' eyes flashed through his mind, and hate swelled inside him. Old wounds were torn wide open and his eyes radiated anger. For a second Faye was completely forgotten and the past was playing over and over in his left eye, clear and bright, threatening to take him over the brinks of insanity.   
  
"What!' His voice was barely above a whisper.   
  
"You heard me, Cowboy. Don't make me repeat the name."   
  
He began loading clips once more, he needed to stop thinking, thinking was driving him crazy. "Why are you helping me?"   
  
"Because the one I love and hate can neither be alive to suffer or envy anymore." Diandre smiled her back still towards him. "She has got so many feelings that kill her already. She's dead to the world, she only lives to destroy you, Cowboy. And that is not life, it is life in death, and there is no such thing."   
  
Spike felt an ounce of pity for her and finished loading the last clip. He stood and stretched, checking the clock on the night stand, the last heat of rage flowing into a dark region of his heart. "We have an hour before the first group of Red Dragons come."   
  
"We have two hours until we meet with Flame. Let us hope your friends are not late." Diandre turned and took a couple of the guns from the pile, grabbing clips and magazines as well.   
  
"They'll be here on time," Spike said trying to hide his uncertainty.   
  
"Cowboy, there is no try in this game of death. There is either do or not do. If your friends aren't here on time, Faye dies, that is a fact." The android threw him some guns.   
  
Spike stared at the rifle in his hands. "Do you think she is dead already?" His voice was soft, the utter emotion raw with frail attempt to hide it. He looked up, eyes innocent, shinning like a child's.  
  
Diandre walked over to him. "That is always a possibility." She touched his shoulder and he turned away as if he were burned, eyes turning cold with burning frost. "Cowboy, don't worry over something you cannot change. Faye might be dead, and yet she might not. There is room for hope and just because hope failed you before does not mean it will fail you again." Diandre smiled and walked out the door.   
  
Spike followed wondering if hope was more than something both black and white. Didn't hope always come with a price? He hoped that the payment would not be a life other than Flame's.   
  
He slammed the door, cracks entering the walls from the door frame as chips fell away like forgotten memories.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~  


  
She was lost and she was found, wishing that someone would tell her the path that she came across was the one she needed to take.   
  
Faye lay on the ground, her whole body numb with the pain she had grown used to. Her eyes were closed but she was aware of the tiniest movement in the room around her. Blackness hung around her shoulders, ironically soothing her with it's cold touch.   
  
She trusted in Spike, she trusted in life, and she trusted in fate. She knew all would betray her but she trusted them anyway. There was nothing else to trust and she didn't know if she could live without it at that point.   
  
The only person she should have been able to count on had failed her too many times to trust. Herself.   
  
She spat on the floor, the blood rising in it too fast for her to prevent it from dribbling down her chin as she coughed. Her head spun as a darker blackness, one hellish and unforgiving grasped at her and she strived to remain conscious.  
  
Bitter thoughts filled her head as she wished for a normal life, and 'if only' she had done that and 'if only' she'd said that. She didn't want to be a bounty hunter, she didn't want to be the messed up little girl to her soul, and the adult woman who knew exactly what she was doing. She didn't want to be a killer and she didn't want to be just another death in the paper. She wanted to be Faye, and she wanted to know who the hell Faye Valentine was.   
  
But the answer ran from her once again and she cried out angry with the angry way life was treating her. She couldn't withstand the pain and attack of her own feelings but yet she could laugh at Ayutora's administrations. She laughed bitterly, her throat catching in blood as she began to cry silently.   
  
_Spike, come to me. Save me from this crazy bitch and myself._ She was sobbing as her cheek pressed itself against the cold floor that smelled of old and new blood. The tears caressed her cheeks, caressed where Spike's hand should have been, comforting her through touches instead of words that meant nothing..   
  
"Damn it!" Faye screamed into nothing. "Ayutora, get me the fuck out of here! I am going to beat the shit out of you, you fucking bitch!" Faye screamed at the top of her lungs filled with rage. She didn't want to be some part in hurting Spike again. She was relying on him too much and should have just given up and died along time ago. But she stayed selfishly alive so that she may find him and love him. Find and love herself in the same way.   
  
Faye could feel the fear quiver inside her soul as terror raced hand and hand with rage and anger. Her body thrusted and pain ripped through her whole being. At that moment pain couldn't have gotten worse. But it did and she bit her tongue to keep from crying out as blood spilled around her, her tongue coating with it as it filled her mouth.   
  
Her world was spinning and everything was spinning in circles, the darkness around her taking on different shades at it swirled and twisted into a picture that made her sick to her stomach.   
  
Then the door was opening, and a figure was stepping in, a shadow against the light that passed behind them. Then all Faye knew was black, and once more the faceless sleep took hold of her so deeply she didn't know if she wanted to wake up.   
  
  


~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


"Mr. Spiegel," the young man said bowing slightly.   
  
There was three dozen men and women in the small basement.   
  
Spike nodded at the leader and stared at the crew filled with determined looking faces. Did they know they were risking their lives for just one life? Did they know they could all die because of his own personal reasons. Guilt stricken, heavy hearted, Spike spoke to them solemnly. "Today, I have called you not for an assassination, not for anything that will boost the integrity of the Red Dragons."   
  
Confusion, puzzlement, and surprise entered some of the gazes that stared at him. Spike sighed, and Diandre beside him nodded for him to continue. "Today we fight for a life, to me is very important." He rubbed his hands through his hair and stared at them all. "If anyone wants to leave they may do so. I understand by my calling you here was selfish and irresponsible." He waited.   
  
No one made a move to turn away.   
  
The leader stepped foreword once again. "Sir, we have all been here since the fall of the Van. They were ruthless, and never did any good for the world. We respect you, sir, and your decisions, and we all want redemption for everything that we've done. The blood stains deeper in hearts than bullets or guns, sir." The young man's eyes shone with emotion and Spike felt and inner part of him sigh. He stared around at the other faces and all held the same hard cold understanding look.   
  
Spike smiled. "Alright, gather your weapons, we meet our enemy in an hour."   
  
"Excuse me, sir. Who is our enemy?" The young man asked.   
  
Spike stopped and turned from them. "Ayutora."   
  
There was a hush of mummers as some stood a second thought.   
  
"Sir..?"   
  
Spike's eyes were hidden underneath the green shift of hair. "She betrayed us and has proved to be worse than the Van could have ever been." His voice was a low growl. "No more questions! Move out!" Then he parted through the doors, leaving them all in silence.   


~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


They walked into the bar.   
  
"Welcome." She was hidden in the shadows of the dim lights, as were half of the men that filled the place top to bottom. She was on the balcony and stood with her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. In one instant Julia's image flashed with hers and Spike almost gasped. She looked so much older without her hair strangled around her face. She looked so much like Julia with those cold blue eyes, with the same distant and dangerous look she had. But the resemblance was only on coincidence. How convenient that Vicious fall for someone that looked like Julia..._His_ Julia....   
  
Spike smiled, his cheek turning up ironically. "Yo."   
  
"You want Faye?"   
  
"That's why I'm here." He said as if she should've known.  
  
Flame's mouth turned up angrily. "You'll have to fight for her, and even after that you might not get her."   
  
"I'll get her, and have your head on a platter." Spike dipped his hand in his pocket.   
  
"I'll have your heart bleeding on a platter before that." Flame smiled crossing her arms.   
  
"You talk to much." Spike out his gun and shot the sounding bullet of death.   
  
  
  
  



	16. CHAPTER 16

_Disclaimer: CB is not mine.   
  
NOTE: This was going to be the last chapter but since I have so much homeorwk tonite I have to drag it out. So here is the first part of the last chapter. Hope you all like it.   
  
Chapter 16_  


  
Flame dodged the bullet and moved away, letting it graze her cheek. For a second time stood still, and the blood ran down her cheek like the soft tears that had escaped her emotionless eyes when she lost her Black Dragon, her beloved Vicious. Lightening passed across her eyes and she saw herself, saw her death that was uncertain with a life that she would live if she survived. Fate was uncertain, life and death were screaming for her to decide so they could understand what to do.   
  
But she liked that Fate was undecided. It made things interesting, even if it was her own death in the balance.   
  
"Well done," she said softly. Her words creeping with hellish hate. "But not good enough. We shall see if you can get passed my army to defeat me." She walked away from the balcony and disappeared into her home, the shadows. She let the darkness enfold her, and let the blood spill over her neck, over her shirt, and down her chest. She didn't care that it tickled it's way down her body, she didn't care that she was sloppily allowing it to taint her. She was already tainted, tainted with hate to destroy anything that hurt her, made her vulnerable to emotion. What did it matter if one more stain surrounded her in a world that never wanted her to have happiness?   
  
She sighed and went to go retrieve Faye. She knew that was what he came for, and she knew that Faye was one of the many things he was going to loose that night.   
  


~*~*~*~*~  


  
He'd missed her! He'd let her slip away when he had her at gun point. But inside he had known she wasn't going to be that easy to kill. In his soul he knew that she was more than the fragile girl she had once appeared to be. Every part of him knew there was only a small chance to defeat her and the door to that chance was closing fast. Why or how he didn't know.  
  
Diandre was by his side, looking around, starring as bullets showered around them. She held no weapon, she held no armor, all she had was her bare hands, skin and flesh that was more than just blood and bones. His men were firing at a draw point, neither side was moving foreword, neither side was moving back. The war was just beginning, and innocent lives were being lost for two ideals that should have been settled when he should have died.   
  
He stood behind the pillar loading and checking all of his guns. Everything was ready. "Ready?" He asked the android at his side.   
  
"Yes." Was all she said as she jumped out and began running across the middle of the battlefield, he followed with eager heart beats as he shot his guns. He shot one of Flame's men in the face and the man fell to the ground in a mess of blood and brains. He shot two more hanging from the balcony. She ran along side him, taking twelve bullets, shielding his body with hers.   
  
He threw her a gun but she refused. "Are you fucking crazy!" He shouted as he watched blood flow over her body and soak her to the bone. But he reminded himself she wasn't human and that pain was nothing not born into feeling.  
  
She turned to him and for a second the world was quiet and killing wasn't a concept let alone a word. What he saw in her eyes, what he saw in her soul, was loyalty and understanding, indifference and love, feelings he could never grasp even if he tried. "I thought that I was made without a purpose. If I had one it was for the wrong reasons. But my purpose now is to protect you, Spike." She sighed as another bullet hit her in the leg. They were still running and he was still shooting but all seemed small compared to her words. "I know that you are more important than I am. I know Faye is more important than Flame is. You two can make a difference in this world where we cannot." She smiled through the blood raining down her face as they reached the door where Diandre guessed Faye was being held. She worked the panel as he focused through the coldness her voice brought.   
  
He fired again, sick of the blood that was being spilled, sick of hearing her voice speak truth he didn't want to hear. He could feel her feeling, feel her words that held honest truth, and he knew that the android was more than an android. She was someone just like he was, dreaming for a life where violence wasn't a necessity, forget the fact that she was artificial. That didn't matter.   
  
Violence was what he had been taught to know. It was all she knew, all she was programed for, but she was breaking all the rules, breaking them to help him. Breaking them to come alive in a body that was never alive to begin with. She was becoming who she was inside, and he admired her for it.   
  
"We're in," she said as the light flashed green on the door panel.   
  
A bullet crashed through his chest as he went in and heard the door close behind him. Blood soaked his hands as he clasped his wounded chest and tried to breathe. Diandre tried to help him but he pushed her away. "I'm fine," he said with a grimace. Faye's eyes filled his mind and he straitened knowing that she was the one he was saving. He wasn't saving himself from scars, he wasn't saving his Red Dragons from Death, he wasn't saving Diandre from her own self destruction, and he wasn't saving Flame from her hate. He was saving Faye so he could see her smile over and over again. He was saving Faye because without her his dream was going to end and his heart would be sold to a darkness darker than the past.   
  
He was saving Faye because he loved her.   
  
"Where to, now?" He asked as he stared down the dark hall way. "This looks way too easy." He muttered.   
  
Diandre looked alert, blood trailing down her perfect body. "It's not as easy at it appears," she said as she moved into the hall more, just then a laser flashed at her feet and she jumped back.   
  
Spike stared at where the light disappeared leaving a burnt line in the floor. "Ouch," he said whistling through his lips.   
  
Diandre looked around. "The lasers are hidden in the wall. I don't know how many there are and I don't know how we are going to get through." She sighed, no worry ceasing her actions as she moved her weight to her left foot. Then her eyes lit up. "The lasers are movement sensitive. You have a smoke bomb, or a detonator of some sort on you, Spike?" She asked.   
  
He reached into his pocket. "I've got a grenade," he said smiling. "Won't this take down the whole building?" He grimaced as pain shook his body but he tried his best to ignore it.  
  
Diandre turned to and punched the wall to her right. A loud crack and a rumble filled the room. She turned back to him, holding her broken hand in her other with tender care. "No, these walls are solid. Throw it and get down!"   
  
For a second Spike stared at her. He really saw her then, really saw that she wasn't human. He saw the wounds, the blood, the broken images that merged bone through skin, and in one moment he knew it all meant death. Still she stood before him, alive and running, willing to destroy herself to save him and Faye.   
  
He threw the grenade after pulling out the stopper and ducked down into the corner. The shock wave of pressure shook him as it exploded and he was blown hard against the wall. Diandre stood, her back against the wall, her eyes locking on to every laser that went off.   
  
Then the flames were making her face red, making her whole body a fiery halo of mercy and blood and the lasers were going off because of the movement of the small flames. "Let's go, cowboy. The lasers will be confused between our movements and the flames. We can get by, hopefully, without scratches." She inched foreword as Spike painfully got to his feet.   
  
He paused watching the lasers shooting at nothing and sighed. He swallowed his fear and ran, Diandre close at his side. He dodged the first laser and got hit in the arm with the second. He could hear the hum and hiss of the red beams seeking for his flesh through smoke and death. He wasn't scared and he wasn't confident. He felt nothing but the pain and endurance of his soul rather than his bodily injuries. And he knew, he understood that if he lost Faye through everything, nothing would hurt more than his heart, more than the thought of ever loosing his life for something he didn't know how to hold on to.   
  
But somehow, through the red they found the light, a heaven through a never-ending hell. It was far despite their efforts, it was long despite their feet that starved to stand on a ground that wasn't burning beneath their very soles.   
  
"Almost there, space cowboy!" Diandre cried as he reached for the light, the opening to the doorway that held Faye, his heart, and his soul. He was almost there, and he jumped for it, he lunged for the future he could only have in Faye's arms.   
  
He found the gratification of solid ground underneath his fingers. And he also heard a loud hum and hiss above him, and when he look up he saw the glow of a laser from the top of the door way.   
  
It shone and shot.   
  


~*~*~*~  
  


Where the hell was she! Flame cursed the very existence of regrets as she stared around the blood stained room. If she didn't have Faye she didn't have any cards to play. She didn't have anything to play against Spike. She had nothing....but her lies.   
  
Flame nailed her fist into the wall, cracked the concrete with the iron glove she wore around her right wrist, and growled. She was going to find Faye and when she did she was going to strangle her with her purple hair!   
  
Damn the people who had to behave badly. Damn the people who couldn't stand still until they died. Damn the people for killing her dreams. Damn everyone in the whole world that ever tried to hurt her. She hated everything, wanted everything dead, especially Spike, the one who took her life when he took Vicious''. Damn them all for not understanding because no one was ever going to understand her or her heart.   
  
She walked out of the room, her heart a boil of insanity as she slammed the door and took out her knife. Her army was waiting for her outside, some watching her with fearful eyes.   
  
She spotted her victim.   
  
She grabbed the young woman by her collar and stuck the knife close the woman's eye. "I lost my eye in battle. I was being shot at and a piece of glass stabbed me in the eye. You know what it feels like?" Flame smiled as the girl began to sweat and cry.   
  
"No, ma'am," the girl said, voice quivering.   
  
Flame could feel every ounce of anger and hate float over her limbs as she smiled. She slid the knife's edge under the girl's shut tightly eyelid and laughed as the girl cried out. Blood ran down her cheek like a bloody tear. "That is what it felt like." Flame smiled as she removed her knife. The girl was crying, couldn't stop as she reached to touch her eye and comfort it but Flame was not done with the girl yet. "Want to know what else I went through?" She grabbed the girl by the hair and slit off her ear. Blood pored from the new wound. "I love to see blood, I love to hear you scream. So scream, damn you!" Flame could feel every ounce of insanity fill her bones as the girl screamed for Flame to stop. Flame didn't know how to stop because she was doing everything she never had a chance to do to Faye. There was no stop when it came to a merciless death. The only end was death and it was a long ways away.   
  
"I cut my own ears off from the world because I hated the voices that surrounded me. Told me to do something other than what I wanted to do. I hated it, despised it." Flame ran the knife over the girl's neck as trembles ran through the warm body in her arms. "But then I met someone, a person who knew and felt everything like I did." She threw the girl on the ground and ripped off her shirt. She ran the knife down the girl's chest and cut the her skin. "It felt like my whole world was complete but my chest still hurt, still felt like I was giving some part of me up that I didn't know yet. Ya know?" She smiled wickedly as the girl began to sob uncontrollably. "He was everything I ever wanted, more and less." There was a dreamless quality in her voice as she spoke. Then red rage passed over her eyes and she stabbed the knife into the girl's shoulder. The girl screamed and Flame only wished it could have been Faye.   
  
"Please, ma'am." The girl begged with barely a voice.   
  
But Flame wasn't listening. She was lost in her own world of hate and pain. "Then he died. And do you know what it feels like to loose someone so close to you it hurts?" She looked at the girl waiting for an answer.   
  
The girl shook her head.   
  
Flame smiled then, pure hate, pure evil written all over her face. "It feels like this!" She screamed as she stabbed the knife into the middle of the girl's chest crushing the breastbone. Blood sprayed everywhere as Flame used the knife to pry and break open the girl's ribs, move past the lungs, and find the nearly dead heart. The girl was barely conscious, the sobs were gone, but her lungs were still barely breathing as Flame reached in. Her hand came back bloody with a heart. "It feels like someone reached in my chest and stole my heart." Her voice was hissed as she stood and threw the bloody organ on the girl's face.   
  
There was silence as she looked around at the stark white faces of her army. She turned and wiped her hands on a young man's uniform, barely seeing the disgust and nausea in his eyes.   
  
The alarm went off then, flashing red lights through the hall. "It's time, get that body the hell out of my sight and get ready for Spike. He's coming, Faye here or not, we'll have his heart on a platter!" She screamed as she grabbed her knife from the girl's chest and put it in her pocket.   
  


~*~*~*~*~  
  


She was on top of him, her breathing short and struggled as she tried to ease off his chest. "Diandre," he whispered as he lifted her off his chest. The laser hissed again but she moved her hand and shot it with the gun that had been at his side, exploding it's face with an unsteady hand.   
  
She groaned as he sat her back on the floor, his eyes filled with worry as he sat over her. She had saved him, saved his life that mattered to almost nothing in a long line of truth. She was staring at the open door way. "They're coming." She said softly.   
  
He looked at the large wound that scorched her back and halfway through her body. Blood flowed like a black river and he ripped his shirt to cover the gaping whole.   
  
"It hit my heart." The android laughed ironically. "I never thought I had one, but it was there huh?" She smiled up at him as he held her. "I just didn't know how to use it."   
  
Her life was leaving her. "Leave me, they're coming and I won't be able to fight." She moved her eyes away from his and sighed. "I'm sorry I'm so useless." Her eyes drifted past the events of reality.   
  
Spike shook his head. "You're not useless. You never were so don't think that." He could hear their footsteps. He brushed the blood out of her face as she began to close her eyes.   
  
"Do dreams exist for someone who was never alive?" She asked distantly.   
  
Spike smiled, or tried to. "I suppose they do." He thought a moment. "Yes," he said firmly. "They do."   
  
Diandre smiled and he could feel every ounce of feeling she never should have had as an android. "That's good." Then she closed her eyes and breathed one last breath.   
  
"Good-bye, Diandre. Thank you for everything." He set her head down and looked up. He was surrounded by soldiers as they stared at him with glistening eyes like demons of the Devil.   
  
Anger raged through him. _Flame. all Flame's fault...  
  
_He stood and heard the click of guns as they aimed. He reached into his pocket and held his last grenade. His heart felt frozen. How many more people did he have to loose until the violence stopped? How many more people had to die because of him?   
  
He smiled with hate as he let the grenade drop. He kicked it with the hatred and self destruction he knew Diandre must have felt as she gave her life up for his.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	17. CHAPTER 17

_Disclaimer: CB is not mine.   
  
NOTE: Are you ready for the end?  
I'M NOT runs around grabbing her hair AHHH!!!_  
_  
Chapter 17_  


  
  
Her eyes watched the doorway as the echoes of gun shots and shouts stretched over the air around her, caressing her, forcing her to watch her future through her one eye over and over again.   
  
Fate was decided.   
  
She smiled.   
  
Her red hair flared over her face, caressing the paleness of evil and hate with fiery fingers winding over and under bleeding ends. Her face was streaked with blood, the girl's blood, her heart's blood, her nature's blood. Her eyes so fierce that everything around her didn't focus as much as the darkness with in the lightness of shades reflected a soul's inner fury so purely that even Death cringed.   
  
He was coming, she could feel his hate through the walls, feel his fury and frustration at everything that he caused, she caused, that two faiths disturbed in believing nothing but themselves caused.   
  
Let him come.   
  
Let him end it.   
  
Let Death rule over everything she didn't have control over until now.   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


He was dancing in a black void that he couldn't find a way out of. He shot the next soldier in the face, but he hadn't really shot the gun in his hand, it just _happened_. He wasn't massacring all these men on the floor who were screaming and crying to fall back, to run from the murderous monster- he wasn't.   
  
Blood, was it his or was it theirs, streaked his face, his hands, his coat, his arms, and legs. Pain, was it his or was it theirs, passed through him, in him, around him, cutting him like a knife stronger than words, stronger than wounds.   
  
What was going on!  
  
Why was he loosing himself in something that was wrong but felt so hellishly right!  
  
He was loosing control of himself, through the blood, the screams, the hate, the bones, that were all becoming what he was, and he had known! He had known he was a killer at heart, he was a hater that hated the world for existing. Only in killing he knew who he truly was, only in the game of life for life, and soul for soul, was he truly himself.  
  
But he loved through all of the rage, anger, and hate. And that made everything worse.   
He loved Faye because, though he hadn't known it, she had given him a reason to live, a reason to yell at her and rant at her, laugh at her and hate her. She made him feel like he didn't need the killing, or the rage to be who he was. She made him feel like a normal man, with normal needs, normal feelings.   
  
But he wasn't normal.   
  
He threw his empty clip away and loaded a new one as he shot the rest of the soldiers in their hearts and faces. Blood sprayed everywhere as his own wounds ate at him, scraped at the only thing he was now- a man with bones and skin, but no soul. Just a random heart that longed for a love too frozen to be called a feeling.   
  
He stared at the mountains of corpses around him, some still alive through the death but he walked passed it all, over it, to the doorway covered in blood at the end of the hall.   
  
Flame was behind there, and if he killed her, if he stole her life, then maybe she would die with the monster that craved blood inside himself.   
  
He could only hope.   
  
He turned the handle, slippery with blood and drenched in hate that knew nothing of love. His pushed on the door and opened it, staring ahead, heart, gun, rage, and body ready to kill.   
  


~*~*~*~*~  
  


"Welcome," she said smiling through hatred so strong it made the empty storage room cold and dark. Boxes lined the one wall, foreign to a battle field so heated with frosted hate.  
  
He didn't know how to reply because his voice was lost to something utterly inhumane in his soul. A feeling that consumed him to the fullest and darkened his eyes so angrily that they were smothered in an utter blackness. His hand was before him aiming his gun unconsciously.   
  
Coolness of a weakened heart tried to waver but did not succeed.  
  
"Are you too weak to say hello?" She asked from her chair in the center of the room, her hair covering half of her face, blood streaking her slick clothes and white skin. She sneered when he did not answer, the lack of words consumed the air with heavy burden.   
  
He felt his finger tighten on the trigger. "Where is Faye?" He asked, his voice so fierce it sounded animal.  
  
Emerald eyes flashed filled with hatred in his mind. She'd shot him, she hated him, but even if that were all true he still loved her. He knew even if she didn't want him any where near her he couldn't bear the thought of her dead. If she lived far away he'd still be relieved because she would be alive, and not in the ground six feet under.   
  
He would feel like he had succeeded in not failing yet another life.   
  
He had hurt Faye by betraying her to another future, he knew that, but he was sorry, and he hoped to God a past decision did not kill her instead of him. Death always wanted him and he'd gladly give his life for hers, only for her.   
  
Flame smiled as a dim light turned on over their heads. Spike could see the hellish harlot in all her bloody glory as she stood, blood dripping off her coat in droplets. She spread her hands. "What you see is what you've been looking for," she said softly.   
  
"Faye is _not_ dead," Spike said firmly. Emotion needed to be wiped out, it wasn't professional, and right now he needed to be professional. If Faye was dead, Flame still needed to be destroyed he couldn't just give up. Either way, Flame didn't deserve the life given to her.   
  
Either way he couldn't help but feel his heart sink to the floor.  
  
He couldn't believe in what Flame said, though. No, Faye was alive, she was being the bitch she always was somewhere, and finding her way to him...  
  
"Oh, no?" Flame smiled, enjoying the torture on her foe's face. "She made beautiful screams when I tore out her lungs." She laughed.   
  
Spike could feel his heart twist. "You bitch!" He hissed. Damn her for playing on his heart! "Faye is not dead!" He yelled and shot out, the trigger pressed and the gun shot rang.   
  
He would not believe a damn word she said!  
  
Flame dodged.   
  
_Damn!  
  
_Flame stood with a sword in her hand as she unsheathed it from behind a box.   
  
Past flashed through Spike, nostalgic pain that eased him through memories, through deaths, through blood, through feelings that caused him to fall to his knees. "Where the fuck did you get Vicious' sword?" He said as he stared at her through angry eyes of ultimate hell. His hand clutched the cool metal in his hand as he searched for reality through everything inside of him.  
  
She touched the sword, ran it along her palm, cutting herself and smiling as she licked the blood away. Then she stared at him, her face loosing feeling, her eyes lifeless. "Do you believe Faye is dead?" She asked as she walked foreword.   
  
Spike got to his feet. "No," he lifted his gun.  
  
She charged him and for a second the world turned black and white save for the two warriors, one a dreamer and one a reality angel that sought self destruction as well as a foe's oblivion.   
  
Sword hit gun.   
  
_Vicious and Spike wrestled as anger flared between two souls.   
  
_Spike shot and hit Flame across the cheek as he fell backward. Memories mixed with new times.   
  
"Is she dead!" She screamed at him as she charged again and crashed a devastating blow to Spike's chest, barely missing his heart that bled for a woman that was supposedly dead.   
  
_Faye!_  
  
"No!" A voice screamed as a gun shot fired out and hit Flame in the shoulder. Blood sprayed, a cry of surprise intercepted hate as figures fell from a grace bent and broken, a blade sliced dangerously close to a heart that beat wildly with preconization of something so wrong it was right.   
  
Spike looked around and saw Faye in the doorway. Her dress, the one he had bought for her, was torn to shreds, and still she looked beautiful. Purple hair messed and cached with blood, scratches gashes covered her from head to foot, and dirt streaked her face and arms. She looked like a devil's demon with God's grace as the light framed her form. She was bloody, almost dead as she wobbled, but her eyes never wavered from Flame who clutched her shoulder and bared her teeth.   
  
"I am not dead." Faye's voice was hard, and weak but angry and full of the fire Spike could remember so well through the aching and pulling of his heart.   
  
Faye was alive! He sighed with relief.  
  
Flame growled from the ground, fingers scraping and bending back fingernails painfully. "How dare you come back!" She hissed through clenched teeth.   
  
"How dare I come back to retrieve my lover?" Faye asked, her voice shaking on the word 'lover' and making Spike shiver with something so strong he almost felt compelled to hold Faye, and take away her pain, ease of her struggle of life and death that hung dangerously around her.   
  
Faye smiled weakly. "I'm sick of all your bullshit, Ayutora. Now you die." Faye shot the gun and Flame stood unflinching.   
  
Nothing happened.   
  
Faye was out of bullets. She threw the gun to the floor and stood ready for a battle she wasn't going to win.  
  
_Shit! _Spike thought. He held his gun and pointed it at Flame within seconds. "Don't move." He said standing, his voice cold, blood fell to the floor from his chest..   
  
Flame turned to him. "That's a good idea, Spike. _Don't move_." Her voice was hypnotic as he stared into her eyes that seemed to glow red. Then he tried to shake his head from the weariness in it and found he couldn't.   
  
He was frozen psychically as Flame's laugh sounded through his ears. _  
_  
He couldn't even move his lips to talk.  
  


~*~*~*~*~*~  


  
Flame stared at Faye, her eyes a glistening blue, both so eerily different yet the same. Faye searched her skirt for a weapon and found only the small golden pistol she had found on the dead Diandre moments before. Fear shook her in fragments of space and time, holding onto a life that was fading fast. She reached for the gun, pointed it, and smiled through angry pain that nagged at her body.   
  
Diandre's face had been so peaceful, so understanding even in death. And even in death Faye had felt some part of her open, some part of her bloom, some part of her break away as she stared for what seemed like forever at the other woman, her savior, and friend. Faye had owed the android her life and had failed to be there to repay the dept.   
  
But it didn't matter now did it?   
  
Faye tried to smile through the tears that were forming in her eyes. She could feel something in her grow as shadows covered her face and let everything surface with the hatred that made her one...  
  
The two women faced each other first with silence.   
  
"Who are you Faye Valentine?" Flame's voice came to her softly, easing her out of thought.   
  
Faye could feel the anger run her down to the core that was bloody and scorched already. She knew who she was, damnitt! She knew herself and she was going to show that fucking bitch in her full glory just who she was inside. "I am.." She was loosing control and fading into the feeling that had been there since she saw Diandre dead.   
  
It always took someone to die for her to actually realize things she never would have realized otherwise...  
  
Faye lunged, purple hair hiding her eyes.   
  
Flame's eyes widened in surprise as the other brushed down on her with so much feeling that it wavered Flame's stance. That waver was all Faye needed to connect with a hard kick to the chin.  
  
"I am Death, and pain!" Faye hissed as she punched the other in the opposite direction of her kick.   
  
Flame lashed out and caught Faye across the shoulder.   
  
"I am hate!" Faye screamed as she kicked the other in the stomach without flinching from the new wound, her eyes still hidden beneath purple hair, drenched in sweat and blood, some her own some Flame's.   
  
She couldn't feel, it wasn't really her fighting, it was an inner part that consumed her and made into something so different she couldn't recognize the feelings or the voice she was feeling, hearing, using.   
  
"I am love, and I am an undying curse," she screamed as she fell next to a frozen Spike. "I am here and I am gone," she said softly as she forged Flame again.   
  
"I am a killer." Flame slashed at her arm and reopened old wounds and caused a new one to fire with red. "I am a victim, and I am a victor," she said looking at the blood dripping down her arm, pain reverberating through her body but not to her mind. Flame was laughing, and hate surged through Faye as she looked up.   
  
"I am dreams, and hopes," Faye said softly thinking of Diandre. Pain ripped through her with undying vengeance.   
  
She lifted her hand with her gun as Flame stared at her before charging her one last time.  
  
Then Faye shot the gun. "And most of all I am Faye- a past, a present, and a furture you will never understand!" She screamed as she fired again and again at empty space where Flame once was, bloody floating down to the ground as a body feel neatly to the floor in a drenched sigh of pain, as a sword clattered relentlessly without effort to it's awaited fate.   
  
"I am a victor," Faye repeated as her strength flowed out of her and she fell to her one knee. Feeling surged through her, memories surged through her, and darkness with light surged in the air as Faye stared at the fallen foe.   
  
Flame smiled up at Faye, who brushed her hair from her eyes, the green aqua so deep with emotion they glowed. "You have not won," Flame said as a click sounded from behind, her voice weak yet strong.  
  
Faye heard the click behind her as she turned and dodged a bullet shot by Spike. His hands shook as he tried to ward off the physic energy in his bones in vain.   
  
"Spike," she whispered as everything left her. She couldn't dodge anymore, she couldn't fight anymore, she couldn't resist the urge to give up anymore. It was all too hard, and she was too weak. Failure, that's what she was, and it hurt to realize that part of Faye was disappointment, and lack of strength.   
  
"Faye... run," he said as he stepped towards her and pointed the gun at her chest.   
  
She picked her head up, tears in her eyes as she stared up at him, breath coming so fast it hurt. "I can't," she whispered back, tears streaking her face as she stared into his eyes deeply.   
  
Spike was sweating as he moved closer to her. He was fighting it, and Flame was laughing behind them. Her voice so evil and so deadly that Faye looked down again. She stared at her hands, stared at the bloody ruins of a woman giving up too soon.   
  
"Damnitt, Faye!" Spike shouted as he put pressure on the trigger.   
  
Faye picked her head up slowly and waited.   
  
A gun shot mixed with another.   


~*~*~*~*~*~  
  


Ed stood in the door way with a gun, anger pulsing through golden eyes. Flame had stopped laughing as Edward's gun still pointed in her direction, smoking with anger as the little girl glared out of nature at her enemy. "Ed pissed. Ayu-girl was a nasty person!"   
  
Then her eyes traveled to a Spike who still held the gun that shot at Faye. His eyes were wide as he stared down at a fallen woman and angel.   
  
"Faye," he whispered as he fell to his knees beside her. He was loosing yet another person. In Faye's face he saw Lin, Mao, Annie, Shin, Gren, Vicious, Julia, Diandre, and so many nameless people he'd killed in his life. He'd failed, and was still failing as the last person he'd never thought he'd love the way he did slipped through his fingers.  
  
Death failed to touch him, but still managed to kill those he loved.   
  
He couldn't protect them.   
  
"Faye, please say something," he said as he lifted her head onto his lap and stroked the hair from her eyes. She was still breathing but barely. The bullet missed her heart, but it didn't matter. His wound had been the last that would kill her.   
  
Her death was his fault.   
  
It made it all worse as guilt flooded through him.  
  
He should've fought harder.   
  
She stared distantly, unblinking as blood edged at the corner of her mouth. Silence was louder and they could hear their heart beats beat as one as Spike looked at Ed. "Call the ambulance!"   
  
Ed looked at him distantly. "I call police, paramedics here already. Explosions wake town and men being treated in hallway." Her voice was soft and childish despite the blood on her hands.   
  
"Tell one to get the hell in here!" He shouted.  
  
Faye coughed in his arms as Ed left the door way.   
  
"Faye," he said harshly. "Hang the hell in there!" He touched her bloody cheek.   
  
Still she stared in a distance, past him, through him. "I never thought I'd have to admit to myself who I was. I don't think I ever wanted to know because knowing meant understanding and I didn't want to understand myself. I was afraid of myself." She smiled as she coughed again, her voice weak with lingering death.   
  
"Faye, don't try to speak," he said softly. "C'mon, you tomboy, tough this out. I know you can get the hell out of here alive." Spike gave her his best annoyed look.   
  
Tears streaked her face as she finally looked at him. The effect of her eyes, they burned him inside because he saw was utter despair. "I need to give up, Spike." She said softly. "I'm too tired to fight death one more time. I'm not like you who searches for something and finds something to live for. I _can't_ do that." Her voice became less than a whisper.   
  
Spike could feel something inside him break and bend as he stared down at her. He held her tighter as she wrenched in his arms.   
  
"Will you miss me?"   
  
"Faye..."  
  
"Miss me, Spike. Remember me...please," she gasped. "Ke-keep....me...ali-alive."   
  
"I will."   
  
"I....love...you..."   
  
He bent his head and kissed her lips.   
  


~*~*~*~*~  
  


She stared up at him, she could feel the life draining from her body as Diandre appeared before her eyes. He faded and the pain faded, the heart breaking vansihed as she sat there and just was, nothing mroe and nothing less. No questions asked, no answers given.  
  
"Faye, do you want to die?" Diandre asked as her eyes stood kind and ready to take her away.   
  
"No," she replied watching as memories floated by them slowly. But all she could see clearly was the form in front of her. Diandre couldn't be there but she was, did that mean she was dead?  
  
Where were they?   
  
Diandre smiled. "You have to fight to get back to Spike, and I will help you, if that is what you want," she said coming closer and touching her friend's face.   
  
Faye closed her eyes. "Why?"   
  
"Because you and your friends gave me feelings, a heart that I never knew I had." Diandre ran her fingers through Faye's hair that had lost the blood and the dirt, and was now a silk mass of purple. "I owe you many things I can never repay."  
  
Faye opened her eyes and stared at Diandre. "What do you forfeit for helping me?" She understood just not comprehended.   
  
Diandre smiled and backed away. Eyes were sad, so sad...  
  
"What do you forfeit?" Faye asked again.   
  
"My soul," Diandre said turning away, green hair flying over a sad face.   
  
"I don't want to go back," Faye said moving towards her.   
  
Diandre turned back around. "You've made your choice, Faye. I do this freely." With that Diandre stepped foreword and kissed Faye on the forehead. Light floated around two souls that fought for emotions and love that both wanted ever since life began and death ended. And now life was reborn one last time through the tears of yesterdays and the tomorrow's to come.   
  
_KEEP DREAMING SPACE COWBOY..._  
  
Stay tuned for the epilogue!  
  
  
  
NOTE: Did not have time to review, will do that later, aidos!!! VT  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	18. EPILOGUE

**_Disclaimer- CB not mine.....  
  
THANK YOU'S- Hey, all my support for this story goes out to Lexi, without you this would have been another unfinished symphony! I just want to thank you for all your support!! Also thank you to everyone who reviewed!!! It was wonderful experience writing this thanks to all of you!!!  
  
A/N- sorry this took so long!!!!! I didn't want it to end at alllllll!!!!! Plus there was vacation, then there was finals, and there's been a lot of clutter. And Yogi, if there was so much wrong with my fic don't read it please, thank you come again!!  
  
HERE"S THE EPPIE!!! Its gonna suck!!!! WARNING!!!_**  
  
Epilogue  
  
The dream had been everything that had chased since then. A when she couldn't escape, a place she couldn't run from, a place she desperately wanted to forget. And why that morning had chosen to plunge her into the hands of memories... She didn't know.   
  
She opened her eyes as the sun kissed her awake through the open window as her mind cleared and the feeling of security embraced her like a loving touch so far forgotten that she hardly remembered what it was like until light poured over her and shook away her nightmares. The nightmare, everything she had accomplished, and everything she had done...  
  
She felt his arms around her as she turned her head and stared softly at his sleeping face, his eyebrows knitted together as a groan escaped his slightly parted lips, his fingers tightening for a few seconds on her shoulders.   
  
She felt something in her heart tear. He dreamed of the past, and she couldn't stop it from taking him over, making him feel the pain she only wished she knew how to take away.   
  
_But you can take it away, _the voice, once her enemy said softly in her head.   
  
Faye smiled and leaned to kiss him softly on the lips, her soul filling the simple action with so much love and yearning that he awoke with a start cast by surprise. But then he entwined his fingers in her hair and stroked her shoulder as she smiled and pulled away to stare deep into the eyes she never thought she'd love as much as she did.   
  
"Morning, Romani," he said smiling impishly.   
  
"Morning, Goucho," she said back as she pressed on his chest and pushed him down on the bed as she rose, taking the sheet with her and wrapping it around her shoulders as she smiled and stared out the window, the light pouring over her, making her warm despite the sudden freeze in her heart.   
  
Things had changed so much...  
  
Had they changing too fast?   
  
It had only been a year and a half since she had died and she was married. She had a house to call her own, a dog and a sweet little black cat. She sighed as she rested her head against the glass.  
  
Was she really complete now?   
  
Spike came up behind her, kissed her shoulder, embraced her and kissed the back of her neck. "What are you thinking about?" He asked mummering with sleep still lingering on his voice.   
  
She touched his hand that was on her shoulder, knowing that it was all real, all reality and not a fantasy. Not a dream anymore but something so close it was worth everything thing they had done to achieve it.  
  
Had it all been worth it?  
  
A child cried over the baby monitor on the small table next to their bed and Faye's heart stopped with excitement and unbearable love that exploded inside her and chased all doubt away.   
  
Spike groaned. "I was hoping to have a nice quiet romantic morning," he complained sarcastically. He kissed her cheek before rushing out of the room yelling to the cries that were golden and true. "Dad's coming with your bottle!"   
  
Yes, it had all been worth it. She stared out the window one last time, said good-bye to the past, faintly seeing a woman smiling with green hair as she disappeared into the sunlight that glowed brighter then before. A silent whisper, "Good-bye," and Faye knew it was finally over even if it wasn't all forgotten.   
  
There was a loud crash as the center table in the hallway collided with Spike. "Ow damnitt!"   
  
A loud laugh as Ed walked into Faye's room, her orange hair and innocent eye glowing as she smiled, her arms encircling a now quiet Anastasia. Green eyes stared with wide innocence as a small patch of green hair played over a round soft head. "Spike-Person fell!!!" Ed proclaimed. Anastasia laughed.   
  
Faye smiled as she walked over to the little girl and picked her up, the sound of her little laughter, the feel of her small hands touching her face, the twinkle in the beautiful eyes had all been worth it and Faye swore never to ask herself if it was worth it ever again.   
  
She was Faye, her last name might have changed, her life might have turned a corner she never saw, and her heart might have destroyed the hate that wasn't really hate at all, but she was still the same, and her love for a child she never knew she'd have made all the difference.   
  
Anastasia and her father taught her love beyond comparison, a love that gave her a reason to live, a reason to be, and reason to be who she was that did not involve her past.   
  
The question of _Who are you_ was lost in Anastasia's eyes along with everything her mother wasn't...and who she was as well.  
  
No longer would she ask herself, who am I, again....  
  
_WHO HAVE YOU BECOME, SPACE COWBOY?_  
  
_Night time settled in  
The day finished it's song  
Left me without a single light  
Until you came along  
  
We joined two different paths  
Then went our seperate ways  
The scars of what we were  
Were lost in yesterdays  
  
Can you call back the past  
Can you stop the question Who am I?  
I've become a lost soul forever  
With too many tears in my eyes  
Bring me back the days I lost  
When you left me all alone  
And bring back that security  
Of your love I called my home  
_  
  
  
  
  
**Hey didn't read over... Have to go to bed....  
  
  
  
**  
  



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